jesse watters

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see bak --> TWO

on deck for new tucker bad trinity? YUP GOT GIG HE IS THE NEW TUCKER 1st on trump indict? see strict ft "coddle"

promote primary 9 22 on violent rhet,pow, mofo pending

"kill shot from ambush deadly" said of fauci; 1 22 promote to prime time show

// tucker? escalator food chain? eco-niche?

bak 6 23

rww tag: Jesse Watters

Jesse Watters calls for a military invasion of Maine to track mass shooter | Media Matters for America

Jesse Watters says American civilians need guns to deter a British invasion | Media Matters for America

Fox News' Jesse Watters suggests “CRT” is responsible for deaths of high school students | Media Matters for America

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### Fox News' Bret Baier runs COVID segment casting doubt on vaccine boosters and questioning the number of deaths reported

08/28/23 7:25 PM EDT

### Fox News' Jesse Watters calls COVID-19 vaccine booster shots “a huge scam”

08/28/23

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https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/fox-news-jesse-watters-says-kamala-harris-gets-more-favorable-treatment-because-her-race

https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/jesse-watters-dismisses-donald-trumps-fake-electors-scheme-politics

https://www.mediamatters.org/laura-ingraham/laura-ingraham-says-special-counsel-jack-smith-more-dangerous-any-group-capitol

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new bad trinity all in for trump

mma 7 23

fox News’ evening lineup reshuffle, which rolls out next week with Jesse Watters and Greg Gutfeld joining Sean Hannity in prime time, shows that the network’s executives are determined to stave off its recent ratings collapse by doubling down on its fealty to Donald Trump. Together, the trio secures Fox’s most-watched hours as a safe space for the former president that will help keep him on a glide path to the 2024 GOP presidential nomination.

Fox’s programming typically reflects the leading elements and ideas of the Republican Party, and the new lineup reflects its reinvention as a Trumpist personality cult.

Tucker Carlson, the longtime prime-time star Fox cut ties with in April, was another Trump partisan, to a point. But he also had an independent, preexisting reputation and drew notoriety for his particular set of noxious ideas. Carlson championed foreign autocrats and the blood-and-soil nationalism undergirding their regimes, became perhaps the nation’s most prominent and pernicious opponent of COVID-19 vaccines, led the right’s vicious smears of LGBTQ people, and trumpeted white nationalist views on race and immigration, including the blood-soaked “great replacement” conspiracy theory. Carlson used his prime-time show to manipulate Trump into adopting his positions and even offered veiled criticism when he thought Trump undermined his aims. (Privately, Carlson claimed of Trump, “I hate him passionately.”)

While Watters, Hannity, and Gutfeld all have long records of toxic commentary, no one would describe them as men of ideas. Hannity is a down-the-line Republican Party propagandist, devoted to the success of his party above all else. And Gutfeld and Watters are associated more with a mean-spirited, sarcastic affect and an own-the-libs mentality than any distinct viewpoint.

What Fox’s new prime-time triumvirate demonstrates is that hardcore support for Trump remains the ingredient that unites the right. All three are Trump loyalists, albeit in somewhat different flavors, who have proved willing to defend the authoritarian former president across two impeachments, two indictments, an attempted coup, a series of attacks on the rule of law and constitutional order, and innumerable bigoted eruptions. And unlike Carlson, the three hosts are much more likely to fall in line with whatever Trump decides to do, no matter how abhorrent, rather than try to push him in any particular direction.

Sean Hannity, Trump’s “shadow” White House chief of staff

vid ]

hannity, who retains his 9 p.m. ET time slot in the shakeup, needs no introduction as anotorious Trump sycophan**t who has had Trump’s back in virtually every major controversy since Trump announced his run for president in 2015. A right-wing media mainstay billed by his network as “the longest-running current primetime host in cable news in television history,” Hannity came around to Trump early in the 2016 primary, helped him to win the nomination and then the White House, and reached new heights of power and influence as a Trump presidential adviser.

The Fox host regularly offers Trump a platform for fawning interviews and generates (occasionally contradictory) talking points in his defense at a furious rate. The sprawling conspiracy theories Hannity concocts to explain away Trump’s flaws have dominated right-wing media discourse, spurred fruitless Justice Department inquiries, and even attracted enough of a response from Trump himself to trigger his impeachment.

All the while, Hannity has served Trump as a political operative of unprecedented scope for a member of the press, to the point where he was once deemed the “shadow” chief of staff by White House staffers. If you can imagine an unethical conflict of interest a TV host might have, Hannity has done it for Trump: policy adviser and communications guru, advertisement participant and script doctor, rally speaker and secret back channel, private confidant sharing nightly phone calls with the then-president and public shill taking coverage orders from his White House.

The depth of Hannity’s bootlicking loyalty to the former president can perhaps best be seen in his reaction to a January 2018 report from The New York Times that Trump had previously tried to fire Robert Mueller, the special counsel investigating Russia’s interference in the 2016 election. Hannity spent much of his show that night claiming that the Times’ reporting was likely wrong, stressing that his own sources were “not confirming that tonight.”

But by the end of the broadcast, after Fox News published a report lining up with the Times story, Hannity backpedaled furiously. He adopted a new talking point wholly inconsistent with his old one to maintain the position that Trump had done nothing wrong.

“So we have sources tonight just confirming to Ed Henry that, yeah, maybe Donald Trump wanted to fire the special counsel for conflict,” Hannity said. “Does he not have the right to raise those questions?”

“You know, we’ll deal with this tomorrow night,” Hannity added, before changing the topic to discuss a high-speed police chase.

Hannity will now be bracketed in the Fox lineup by Watters and Gutfeld. The new prime-time hosts and longtime Fox employees share not only his penchant for incendiary conspiracy theories and toxic commentary but also his Trumpist zeal.

Jesse Watters, an O’Reilly crony turned Trump loyalist [vid]

watters joined Fox as a production assistant in 2002 and spent years stalking and harassing the subjects of ambush interview segments for Fox star Bill O’Reilly’s show. But he catapulted to prominence during the Trump years, garnering a weekend show and a slot on The Five in 2017, before landing a weeknight program in Fox’s 7 p.m. hour in January 2022.

The timing of Watters’ ascension is no coincidence: He has provided the pro-Trump commentary Fox’s viewers demand. Trump drew rebukes for launching his 2016 presidential campaign with unhinged xenophobic vitriol — even from Fox founder Rupert Murdoch. But Watters, attuned to the sentiment among the network’s audience, praised Trump for having “tapped into the collective backbone of this country” and said that as president, he wouldn't “let illegal aliens come to the country and murder our women.”

He never looked back, declaring that Trump couldn’t be racist because he has socialized with Black people, defending his most bigoted comments, praising his immigrant child separation policy, and standing up for his family, his cronies, and his responses to the COVID-19 pandemic and police brutality protests.

As the Trump presidency wound down, Watters falsely told his viewers that fraud had permeated the 2020 presidential election, adding that “we used to storm the castle over abuses of power like this.” Days later, a violent mob of angry Trumpists stormed the U.S. Capitol in an effort to subvert the election.

Watters continued standing by Trump following his 2020 election defeat, the subsequent insurrection he summoned, and the waves of evidence of his criminality. He called for Americans to take to the streets in protest after the FBI searched Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort, offered thinly veiled suggestions of a violent recourse to his indictment, and urged Republicans to impeach President Joe Biden and for a reelected Trump to indict him in response.

Watters’ sycophantic commentary helped him climb the ranks at Fox, but it also gave him entry into the Fox-obsessed Trump’s social circle. He dined at the White House with the then-president, a fan of his on-air commentary. Trump congratulated him on his 2019 engagement to Emma DiGiovine, and Trump’s adult sons attended their wedding later that year. (Watters had cheated on his first wife and the mother of his twin daughters with the bride, a former low-level employee on his show who is 14 years his junior; he later said on-air that he had “let the air out of her tires” when he “was trying to get Emma to date me,” though he subsequently claimed to have been joking.)

Greg Gutfeld, a Trump critic who became his champion [vid]

unlike Hannity and Watters, who were early, stalwart Trump supporters, Gutfeld was a convert. A Trump critic during the 2016 Republican primary, Gutfeld had decried the racist former game show host as a “RINO” and a “conspiracy freak,” calling out his “crass” behavior and his mockery of Sen. John McCain’s military service.

But after Trump sewed up the primary and the general election loomed, Gutfeld’s commentary shifted. “Gutfeld was in the position he had previously warned against: the position of defending and excusing Trump,” Brian Stelter wrote in his 2021 book on Fox.

Gutfeld himself admitted in an interview earlier this year that Fox CEO Suzanne Scott had counseled him to leave himself room to evolve his view of Trump. “She was like, ‘Greg, you should maybe prepare for what happens if he wins,’” he told The New York Times.

Gutfeld flipped to become a diehard Trumpist. Like Watters, he defended Trump’s vicious immigration policies, election subversion efforts, misogyny, deadly pandemic response, and racist comments. He is particularly devoted to mainstreaming Trump’s refusals to denounce his most extreme supporters, from the Proud Boys to white supremacists, including those whomarched in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017. And he distinguished himself with particularly absurd remarks about the then-president, like claiming that “he’s the president, he can do whatever he wants,” and, “I can't recall a single instance of Trump actually aggressively going after an individual.”

Gutfeld is particularly clear-eyed about Fox’s relationship with Trump. He repeatedly noted on-air the influence his network had on the man he dubbed “the Fox News president.” And Trump, in turn, warmed up to the Fox host as he became increasingly pliant, touting Gutfeld on the campaign stump and in a.

“Even Greg Gutfeld; he wasn’t good to me two years ago,” Trump said in 2019. “Now he sees all I’ve done, and he said 'Would you rather have a great President or a nice guy?’ I don’t know, I think I’m a nice guy.”

Without Gutfeld’s flip to Trump, and Trump’s subsequent support for him, it is difficult to imagine that the host would have continued climbing the ladder at Fox. As Stelter wrote:

The alternative could have hit Gutfeld in the wallet. Fox made him a millionaire several times over — between his TV shows, the books he promoted on TV, his ticketed speaking gigs across the country — so “Greg has made a cynical calculation,” an insider said. “There’s no point in being anti-Trump.”

For a taste of what the prime-time newcomers bring to the table, consider a July 2019 exchange between Gutfeld and Watters on their panel show, The Five, regarding Democrats’ criticism of then-President Trump’s friendly visit with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un.

“Let’s be honest,” Gutfeld admitted. If a Democratic president had met with Kim, “we would do the same thing.”

“How dare Obama meet with a dictator with no preconditions!” Watters replied, and the pair broke into giggles. Even they can barely believe the absurdity of their pro-Trump hypocrisy.

Fox’s Trumpist retrenchment will help him secure the GOP nomination

fox’s prime-time shakeup comes as the network faces the most sustained challenge to its dominance over the right-wing press in years. The new lineup suggests the network’s strategy for shoring up its right-wing hegemony relies on restoring its Trumpist credentials.

Fox ratings took a dive after the network cast off Carlson. Would-be rivals have responded to its weakness with relentless criticism in hopes of stealing away its viewers. Twitter’s Elon Musk seems to fancy himself as a potential successor to Rupert Murdoch as the right’s media empire builder and is amassing allies, albeit with what are at best significant growing pains.

The network's vulnerability is heightened by criticisms from Trump himself, who has used it as a foil. As I noted last month at MSNBC.com, the network’s posture toward the 2024 presidential primary has been an open question:

Fox’s alliance with Trump is currently in flux. After some initial ill will, the network’s endless promotion helped Trump to the presidency in 2016, and it effectively became state TV for his administration. Fox hosts gained unprecedented influence as the president regularly watched their shows, tweeted about their commentary in real time and took their advice. In turn, their assistance gave Trump a powerful propaganda tool. And since he left office in 2021, the network has continued rushing to the former president’s defense in his times of legal peril. But its support for his presidential bid has waxed and waned amid reports that the Murdochs prefer a fresher face for the Republican Party.

The decision by Fox executives to feature three Trumpists in what are traditionally its most-watched hours may help the network repair its relationship with the former president — but it will certainly shape the contours of the 2024 presidential race. Trump had already all but sewn up the GOP nomination, in no small part thanks to the work Fox hosts had done over the years in shoring up his vulnerabilities. A revamped Fox prime-time slate dedicated to supporting Trump at all costs now brings him ever closer to a return to the White House.

Fox prime-time hosts serve as tastemakers for the right-wing media and key validators for their large and loyal followings. Their support can make or break the Republican politicians who strive to win them over. Trump himself used hours of Fox appearances to win over viewers and seize the nomination in 2016.

Any of his GOP challengers who hope to replicate his achievement must somehow win over the network’s top talents, who owe their own prominence to the former president. That is a tall order, particularly with Trump already holding a large and steady lead in the polls. With Fox rallying behind him, Trump garnering the GOP’s nomination for the third consecutive election and running as a full-fledged authoritarian remains the most likely outcome.

---

note same time as razor wire kia texas

https://www.alternet.org/bombing-mexico-shoplifting-terrorist-activity/

an 7 23 no lnx

Fox hosts: Bombing Mexico 'a good idea' because shoplifting is 'terrorist activity'

Maya Boddie July 26, 2023

During the Wednesday, July 25, segment ofFox News' The Five, the conservative co-hosts Jesse Watters, Jeanine Pirro, Dana Perino and Greg Gutfeld suggested Mexican drug cartels are behind a shoplifting surge in America, and to combat the alleged issue — the U.S. military should bomb them.

:{:{}:

Host Jesse Watters began the conversation saying, "While the liberal media gets a crash course on crime, we're learning that Mexican drug cartels are fueling America's shoplifting surge. They're selling the stolen stuff online and then laundering the profits through, guess where?Chinese brokers. So, Dana, CNN finally discovered crime is a crisis in San Francisco."

Dana Perino replied, "This is after they made fun of us for pointing it out last year...On this point, I think that finding out that there areMexican cartels behind this, makes me feel maybe there's hope that we could figure out a way to do something about it. So the state attorneys general are banding together and they're like let's go after it. But also they need help from the retailers. The retailers don't want to be looted like this either. But the problem, to me, is that all this stuff gets taken and then it's resold online. Like on Amazon, for example. So can Amazon help us out? Somehow, can they figure out a way to track them? We've got AI, we've got all these other tools. There must be a way to try to prevent all of this from happening."

READ MORE: Donald Trump complains that 'somebody leaked' his plans to launch Patriot missiles at Mexican cartels

In April, CNN interviewed Mission Local managing editor Joe Eskenazi about San Francisco's surge in crime, and the editor noted, "There is crime in downtown San Francisco, but there always has been.I think the notion that these businesses were driven out by crime is frankly dishonest. That's always been a factor."

Eskenazi later added, "San Francisco also has lots of property crime because there's a great divergence of wealth and people steal things. But San Francisco’s violent crime rate is at a near historic low right now."

Watters then said, "You can put up the task force, maybe with the FBI, bring in the DEA, make it transnational Greg, since the cartels are involved."

Greg Gutfeldreplied, "It's weird to see these cartels diversify. They're almost like Amazon now. They're doing drugs, smuggling and theft, pretty soon they're gonna have their own podcast. There's another thing that we said a long time ago and I bet we don't -- bombing the car-- remember we said we were talking about bombing the cartels? And people were going, 'No, no, no, that's an act of war, that's in another country.' Yeah, but we do that to terrorists as well, and this is kind of a terrorist activity. And the thing is, now, we see this at least on the Republican side, a lot of candidates are talking about doing it and I think it's a good idea. I think we need to elect a president who values a border. That's the important thing. Bomb these. And there's, like, one cartel we can cooperate with, let them kill the rest. Encourage them to kill the rest."

READ MORE: MTG says U.S. should be 'bombing Mexican cartels' and 'Antifa BLM rioters' instead of 'aiding' Ukraine

Watters then asked Pirro, "Remember when theChinesewere ripping off our DVDs and we sent the entire federal government after them and we actually were pretty effective. This is pretty similar in terms of now it's shoplifting.

She said, "Yeah, and I remember prosecuting a case for the Motion Picture Association because what they were doing was people were going in and they were just making copies of movies," to which Watters replied, "I've watched a few movies like that where the guy just holds the camcorder and the finger? I mean, my friend watched it."

Pirro added, "This is part of a, you know, global organized criminal activity. The problem is that this organization is not just doing retail theft. They're also doing human trafficking. They're doing fentanyl. They're doing all kinds of crime and so they're expanding their criminal network. And now they're going to be so powerful, I don't know if we're ever going to be able to defeat them. Because we've got a president right now, who, you know, with the border -- and they're in charge at the border -- there is nothing going on that's preventing the fentanyl from coming in. We hear about an arrest every now and then. It's usually the locals making the arrests, not the federal government. But the issue is whether or not these criminals are being prosecuted. That guy walked out, right, and then the person in the store says it's a police state for everyone. So for the victims it's a police state, with the criminal, it's not a police state.

That's the actual problem. It's low risk and it's high reward. Low risk because the employee's not gonna punch you out, you're not gonna get arrested, you're gonna make a fortune. You're gonna start this business and you're gonna launder your money through China. And unless we get serious about this, whether it's bombing or whatever -- you have to come up with something. These organizations are dangerous. They are absolutely dangerous. And for everybody at home, your insurance is gonna go up because of it. The cost of retail and consumer products are gonna go up. You're paying for this."

The New York Times' Maggie Haberman reported last year that "President Donald J. Trump in 2020 asked Mark T. Esper, his defense secretary, about the possibility of launching missiles into Mexico to “destroy the drug labs” and wipe out the cartels, maintaining that the United States’ involvement in a strike against its southern neighbor could be kept secret, Mr. Esper recounts in his upcoming memoir. When Mr. Esper raised various objections, Mr. Trump said that 'we could just shoot some Patriot missiles and take out the labs, quietly,' adding that 'no one would know it was us.'"

READ MORE: 'Bomb the Mexicans' is the GOP’s new 'build the wall': columnist

However, Haberman wrote experts argue that, "Patriot missiles are the primary surface-to-air missile used by the U.S. military, which is designed as anti-aircraft and anti-ballistic missile interceptors.As there are no reports of airborne drug labs in Mexican air space.

Trump supporter U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) complained earlier this year that American is "not bombing the Mexican cartels who are poisoning Americans every single day. And I know that sounds extreme. I'm not talking about the Mexican government or the Mexican people. I'm talking about the cartels. They're murdering Americans."

Miami Herald columnist Jean Guerrero notes the "Calls for U.S. attacks on Mexican drug cartels, recently discussed in secret if at all, have become a loudly expressed talking point for Republicans who are trying to exploit the violent rhetoric for political gain," highlighting Trump's 2024 GOP opponent and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis' "recent promises to deploy the military against drug cartels, along with his support for executing smugglers and his assertion that 'you absolutely can use deadly force.'"

She argues, "Republicans aren't making a good faith argument, and that their rhetoric has more to do with racism than finding solutions to the ongoing opioid crisis."

Axios reports earlier this year, Rep. Veronica Escobar (D-Texas) said, "If my colleagues were serious about addressing the cartels, they would start with addressing guns here in America," noting that the cartels "are able to outgun Mexican local law enforcement because of American guns."

READ MORE: 'Time to reverse course': NYT Editorial Board endorses ending the War on Drugs

Watch Media Matters' video below or at this link.

READ MORE: Lawmakers readying bipartisan bills to authorize Pentagon resources to combat fentanyl: report

CNN's full report is available at this link. Axios' report is here.

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

Republican senator: Mexico 'would be eating cat food' without the United States ›

Arizona GOP 'voter fraud' witness implicates Trump-loving lawmaker in drug cartel bribe claims ›

'Bomb the Mexicans' is the GOP’s new 'build the wall': columnist ›

Fox News dismisses the link between wildfires and climate change, mocks those that do make the connection

Scientists say wildfires are becoming more severe as “forests around the world increasingly dry out amid the warming climate”, a fact even observed by Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal. Experts further note that Canada’s wildfire season is a “harbinger of our climate future” with the United Nations warning that by 2090, “global wildfires are expected to increase in intensity by up to 57% thanks to climate change.” But no amount of evidence, either experiential or academic, changes the tone of the reporting at Fox News when it comes to extreme weather and climate-fueled events.

Fox & Friends co-host Brian Kilmeade mocks AOC, climate change czar John Kerry, and White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre for connecting the dangerous air quality to climate change: “Every time it’s real hot, climate change. Every time it’s real cold, climate change. When it rains a lot it’s because of climate change. And you guessed it, Canada, with burning forests, 400 separate fires, it’s because of climate change. AOC said it. Of course climate change czar John Kerry said it, and [Karine Jean-Pierre] KJP has one note, listen.” Fox News, Fox & Friends, [6/8/23]

Fox News host Laura Ingraham suggests that coverage of the event is overblown and mocks those reporting the air quality from a climate angle: “Is this really a novel occurrence for our country or is it getting the coverage of the type it’s getting because it's happening along the East Coast where all the elites live?” Ingraham continued: “The apocalyptic coverage in the New York Times today was just absolutely knee-slappingly hilarious. … CNN's Bill Weir, no stranger to hyperbole himself, used the event to call for action to electrify every car in the United States for humanity’s sake." Fox News, The Ingraham Angle, [6/7/23]

Fox News host Sean Hannity accuses Democrats, including AOC, of politicizing the crisis to push their climate agenda: “Tonight, smoke from the Canadian wildfires, they blanketed the entire East Coast of the U.S. creating a scary martian-like scene in New York City especially. And as usual, Democrats, they wasted no time. They went right to politicizing the crisis, AOC using the wildfire and heat wave in Puerto Rico to once again push her radical Green New Deal or the climate alarmist religious cult agenda.:{” Fox News, Hannity, :(style="background-color:#ffffffff"):}:[6/7/23:{]}:

On Jesse Watters Primetime, climate denier and frequent Fox guest Mark Morano dismissed climate change and accused those making the connection of weaponizing the weather while smoking a cigar: “This is exactly what you would expect to happen. This is Canadian natural disaster mismanagement and now they are trying to blame global warming which makes it, what? Our fault. It's our SUVs. It's our gas stoves which, by the way, didn't New York ban them? Shouldn't we have -- shouldn't wildfires be a thing of the past? I thought they were banning them.”:{ Fox News, Jesse Watters Primetime, :(style="background-color:#ffffffff"):}:[6/7/23:{]}:

On The Five, Jeanine Pirro accuses AOC and Democrats of “pumping up climate hysteria”: “While Americans choke on the smoke, the far left smells an opportunity. AOC thinks this is a great time to push her Green New Deal. She says that we must, ”Adapt our food systems, energy grids, infrastructure and healthcare to prepare for what's to come". Other Democrats are pumping up climate hysteria and bringing back, you guessed it, mask insanity.” Fox News, The Five, [6/7/23]

On Outnumbered,the panel mocks AOC for connecting the crisis to climate change while Fox contributor Kennedy suggests that because wildfires existed before “we started talking about the climate crisis” then the science is not settled: “There are a lot of reasons for wildfires. Wildfires have been happening for a long time. Before we started talking about the climate crisis. So, I want to make sure that the science is settled before we completely turf our economy and flush any innovation we have down the toilet because of a tweet from AOC.” Fox News, Outnumbered, [6/7/23]

Fox turns to its go-to explanation for catastrophic wildfires: It’s poor forest management. And it’s environmentalists’ fault.

Forest management has played some role in the unprecedented wildfire season in Canada — while the role of climate change is also evident and clear. But from watching Fox’s coverage of the fires, you would probably come away with the idea that it’s been Canada’s forest management policies alone driving the worsening fires.

Fox’s jump to shift blame to poor forest management as a tactic to downplay climate change goes back to at least 2018 when Trump first blamed California’s forestry policies while touring the aftermath of the deadly Camp Fire that destroyed the town of Paradise. Fox revived the tactic in full force during California’s apocalyptic 2020 wildfires.

Helping drive the swift move to blame forest management and environmentalists this time around is News Corps darling, Fox News contributor, and New York Post columnist Miranda Devine who wrote a June 7 column, “Smoky New York isn’t climate change — it’s bad forest management,” which has been cited by Fox News personalities and amplified by right-wing media figures online.

:{:{Fox News host }::{Rachel Campos-Duffy on Outnumbered}::{: “The real blame is on the climate}::{ cult. }::{…}::{ They are an anti-human group and they want to shut our forests and close them off to humans and to industry who know how to manage it. And that's what's happening right now.” }::{Fox News, Outnumbered, :(style="background-color:#ffffffff"):}:[6/8/23]}:

On the Faulkner Focus, Fox News contributor Jason Chaffetz insists that poor forest management is liberals' fault: I hate to tell it you folks but there have been big forest fires for eons probably since the beginning of time. It's ironic to me because the same people who claim they want the Green New Deal, they fight us every single time on the mitigation efforts to manage the forests, clear out the underbrush, clear out the dead trees and clear out the fuel that makes these things so ignite in such big fashion. They will not do that as Democrats and these left-leaning liberals. Fox News, Faulkner Focus, [6/8/23]

Fox & Friends co-host Steve Doocy dismissed climate change and redirected the blame to “bad forest management”: “Climate change does not start a fire. It can create dry conditions, and they have really bad dry conditions up in Canada right now. In Canada they are blaming bad forest management because of a very dry winter and they did not get a lot of snow. … Apparently behind the scenes they have not been doing the controlled burns that they should have been doing. And back in 2024 environmentalists wrote a paper and said not enough is being done to fund this kind of forest management and there is going to be hell to pay.” Fox News, Fox & Friends, [6/8/23]

Sean Hannity also suggested that forest management is the main culprit:“Here's what nobody talks about. There is a science. You can get an advanced college degree in forestry. There's something called the controlled burns that climate alarmist cult members:{are all dead set against. And you see, if you have a controlled burn that prevents the bigger fires like the one they're experiencing in little Justin's neighborhood in Canada that's now making it smoke all the way down here.” Fox News, Hannity, :(style="background-color:#ffffffff"):}:[6/7/23:{]}:

Host Jesse Watters claims that there are fewer wildfires now than 100 years ago to dismiss the role of climate change and prop up the forest management argument: “You might be surprised to find out over the last 100 years, there have been less wildfires, not more. The Wall Street Journal says in the early 1900s about 4% of land worldwide burned every year by 2021 that was down to 2.5%. So instead of obsessing over climate change they should take a look at forest management.” Fox News, Jesse Watters Primetime, [6/7/23]

On The Five co-host Dana Perino blames wildfires on forest management and liberal policies: “Canada is experiencing really bad wildfires on their public lands. We have a similar problem, and it has to do with forest management. The Biden administration has policies that are in direct conflict with one another. … Wildfires can occur naturally of course, but if you are actively managing your forest, then you can prevent some of these things. The left has never wanted to do that.” Fox News, The Five, [6/7/23]

Pirro suggests that since only half of Americans believe in climate change that Democrats shouldn’t be linking it to wildfires: Agreeing that poor forest management is the main cause of severe wildfires, Pirro questions why climate change is even part of the discussion: “We’re at a point when I think 49% of Americans believe climate change is caused mostly by human actions, the lowest reported apparently in many years.So why are Democrats, why do they keep pushing climate change over something that could’ve been prevented?" Fox News, The Five, [6/7/23

National TV news chokes out the climate angle in coverage of Canadian wildfires

06/08/23 2:57 PM EDT

With Canadian wildfires, Fox News follows its COVID playbook

06/08/23

Fox News host Jesse Watters says it’s “normal” for the Northeastern United States to be engulfed in smoke from Canadian wildfires

06/08/23

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why 1st?

https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/fox-news-anchor-disregards-foxs-own-debunks-gop-claim-fbi-document-shows-biden-was-paid

https://www.mediamatters.org/climate-deniers/fox-news-runs-ads-mike-huckabees-climate-denial-book-targeted-children

https://www.mediamatters.org/donald-trump/fox-news-responds-federal-trump-indictment-unhinged-demagoguery

former President Donald Trump has been indicted — again — and Fox News personalities are once more rallying behind him. In the hours after news broke that Trump is facing seven federal criminal charges over his mishandling of federal documents, his loyal propagandists denounced the indictment as a “dark day in America” and an attack on American democracy and the rule of law.

Trump wrote on social media Thursday evening that he had been indicted over his mishandling of classified documents. The New York Times later reported that Trump “was charged with a total of seven counts, including willfully retaining national defense secrets in violation of the Espionage Act, making false statements and an obstruction of justice conspiracy, according to people familiar with the matter.”

Trump had taken government documents with him when he left office and refused to return them, leading to an August search of his Mar-a-Lago resort in which the FBI uncovered a trove of documents bearing classification markings, some at the “top secret” level. Special counsel Jack Smith has been investigating the former president’s conduct for months.

Trump is the first former president ever to face federal criminal charges and is expected to surrender in Miami, Florida, on Tuesday. The charges were not a surprise — even Trump’s own former attorney general Bill Barr had repeatedly acknowledged that the former president’s own conduct put him in serious legal jeopardy.

But on Fox, host Jesse Watters announced the news by saying that “the president, former, calls it the boxes hoax” and suggesting that the indictment was an attempt to distract attention from the House GOP’s investigations of President Joe Biden.

The situation rapidly devolved from there. Over the following hours, Fox’s hosts and the menagerie of Trump cronies and sycophants the network put on the air unleashed unhinged demagoguery.

Trump lawyer Alina Habba called it evidence that we live in a “sick world” with “a two-tier system of justice,” citing the lack of legal punishment for Biden, his son Hunter, Barack Obama, and Hillary Clinton.

Former Trump aide Stephen Millerclaimed that “history will record today as the day that we ceased to be a democratic republic and we became a people ruled by an unelected government bureaucracy.”

Former Trump acting Attorney General Matt Whitakercalled it “a really sad day for our country” and “the stuff of banana republics.”

For right-wing activist Ned Ryun, it was “late-stage republic behavior. When you use the legal system as a weapon against political opponents, you’ve abandoned the rule of law.”

“What’s going on here is a disgusting disgrace. It is war on Trump, it is war on the Republican Party, and it is a war on the republic,” Fox host Mark Levin screamed. “You have crossed the Rubicon twice, which has never been done, and we will never forgive you — never, ever, and that’s the bottom line,” he added.

“It is a dark day in America,” concluded longtime Trump adviser and Fox host Sean Hannity. “There is no equal justice. There is no equal application of our laws.” He added, “Our system of justice has now been weaponized beyond belief and this country is in serious trouble."

Fox’s furious denunciations may have taken the issue off the table for Trump’s would-be presidential rivals. When Fox’s Harris Faulkner brought on Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC), who is theoretically running for president against Trump, to discuss the indictment, she asked him, “The bottom line is, you’re a Republican, this was a Republican president, and look at what has happened. Your reaction?” Scott took the hint and issued a rambling response that avoided directly criticizing Trump.

Fox’s over-the-top response is familiar. While some have suggested that the network and its Murdoch owners have turned on the former president, Fox always rises to Trump’s defense at his moments of legal peril.

The network’s stars were similarly furious in March, when Trump was indicted on 34 charges of falsifying business records in a New York state court in connection with the $130,000 hush money payment made to an adult film actress in the closing days of the 2016 presidential campaign. They urged viewers to treat the charges as an attack on the U.S. Constitution, American democracy, the rule of law, and themselves, while denouncing the prosecutor and his purported “witch hunt.”

Likewise, when news first broke of the FBI’s search of Mar-a-Lago, the Trumpists at Fox denounced it as “the worst attack on this republic in modern history” and part of a “preemptive coup” to prevent Trump’s reelection, among other incendiary claims, with hosts urging viewers to believe that “the real target of this investigation is you.”

The throughline is that any legal attack on Trump is inherently corrupt and a signal that America has been lost — and that, if Trump is brought down, Fox’s viewers may be next.

Trump needs the powerful propaganda apparatus of Fox to keep his supporters in line and his primary opponents at bay, and the network’s hosts and executives are happy to oblige. But we’ve seen the disastrous consequences that can come from Fox’s overheated rhetoric in the former president’s service.

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WATTERS (HOST): So, what's the president doing while half the country can't breathe? Well, Biden had lunch with Kamala and then he called the lid at 12:45. Half the country can't go outside or breathe fresh air because our stupid neighbors up north, and thepresident hasn't said a single word about it because we don't have a real president. Other politicians went on TV and told us to quarantine like the good old days.

...

COVID, stay home and wear a mask. Smoke bomb, stay home, wear a mask. Elections, stay home, wear a mask. Nuke strike, stay home, wear a mask. The government's prepared for anything.

---

As NYC is inundated with wildfire smoke, Rupert Murdoch’s WSJ calmly shows link to climate crisis, while Murdoch's Fox News mocks it

WRITTEN BY JOHN WHITEHOUSE

RESEARCH CONTRIBUTIONS FROM SAGE HODIL

PUBLISHED 06/07/23

New York City is currently inundated with a hazardous level of wildfire smoke, making the skies appear yellowish-orange.

The smoke is from wildfires in Canada, which scientists say are “becoming bigger and more frequent” due to climate change, as reliably explained by Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal:

Wildfires like those ravaging Canada are becoming bigger and more frequent as forests around the world increasingly dry out amid the warming climate, many scientists say.

Some of the biggest fires are breaking out in the boreal forests of the Northern Hemisphere such as most of the ones in Canada. That is because the Arctic region has warmed nearly four times faster than the rest of the world, said Carly Phillips, a Boston-based research scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists.

In the boreal areas—mostly conifer forests with long winters and short summers—of Canada and Alaska, she said the annual area burned has nearly doubled in the past 60 years, along with an increase in the frequency of large fires. Russia’s vast Siberian forests have been consumed by giant fires too. Phillips said this year’s outbreak, while unprecedented in size, is just following the trend.

“I don’t know if it’s a tipping point, but what this underscores is that the climate crisis is here and now,” Phillips said.

The link is so obvious and uncontroversial that Journal staff members have no problems tweeting it.

And yet, over at Murdoch’s Fox News Channel, this is just another reason for hosts to punch left, this time at frequent target Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), who dared to point out that the country has work to do to adapt to the climate crisis.

Video file

Video CitationFrom the June 7, 2023, edition of of Fox News' Outnumbered

None of this is novel. Fox News (and the Journal’s right-wing editorial board) have for years pushed climate denial on the body politic. Now that the effects of the climate crisis are impossible to miss, the network is still refusing to recalibrate.

Like the Dominion case shows, it’s not clear if Fox’s audience — or whatever is left of it — will allow the network to speak the truth.

Either way, I’d recommend that people working at Fox News headquarters in Manhattan buy some high-quality masks. They might even still have some sitting around.

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Newsmax's Greg Kelly praises the smoke from Canadian wildfires: “It's a beautiful, interesting aura”

06/08/23 8:45 AM EDT

Sean Hannity mocks New Yorkersfor wearing masks to protect themselves from wildfire smoke

06/07/23 9:58 PM EDT

Fox News' Jesse Watters attacks government officials for suggesting masking to protect against wildfire smoke

06/07/23 The Wall Street Journal

Wall Street Journal

Climate deniers

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https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/fox-news-jesse-watters-claims-fbi-installed-joe-biden-president-intelligence-op-after

omg mm a 6 23

JESSE WATTERS (HOST): Powerful people installed Biden so that he can take orders, not give them. Joe Biden's been groomed his whole career to take orders. And now that he's literally slept his way to the top, they won't let him go anywhere. The FBI put their guy in the White House. "You think we're just going to, like, let voters decide if he should serve four more years? We can't afford to take that risk."

Joe Biden has been an intelligence op since he was vice president. One of the FBI's top informants, a guy with impeccable credentials, a great track record, reported an allegation that Joe Biden took a $5 million bribe -- right under Barack Obama's nose -- from a foreign national in exchange for a policy decision. They've been blackmailing Joe Biden with this for a decade. Well, until a whistleblower came forward. And now, James Comer wants the document released to Congress and the FBI's caught in a cover-up.

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mma 5 23

JESSE WATTERS (HOST): So, what do you call it when a foreign power interferes in our election? Well, we used to call that election interference. Democrats used to be totally against it. They said Putin cost crooked the election. Well, now the Mexican president's on tape politicking against a Republican presidential candidate, urging Americans not to vote for him, and the media is silent.

So, what's the relationship here between Joe Biden and the Mexican president? Well, Joe Biden made the cartels more money than they've ever made in history. And the Mexican president, who's controlled by the cartels, interferes in our election on behalf of Biden. Hm. And Hunter got rich in Mexico when Biden was VP.

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https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/anatomy-smear-campaign-how-right-wing-media-neutralized-pentagon-effort-address-white

no lnx vids

Anatomy of a smear campaign: How right-wing media neutralized a Pentagon effort to address white supremacy in the military

Right-wing media smeared the Pentagon official mitigating white supremacy in the military. Now his unit has been abandoned.

WRITTEN BY JOHN KNEFEL

PUBLISHED 05/25/23

Right-wing media outlets and personalities leveled repeated attacks against a modest Pentagon initiative created in 2021 to address high levels of white supremacy in the military, ultimately neutralizing the effort and leading to the unit’s abandonment. The conservative campaign was directed atmilitary veteran Bishop Garrison, who led the Countering Extremism Working Group, which has now “vanished virtually without a trace,” according to a recent report from CNN.

Garrison was tasked with identifying and addressing the type of extremist views that would be later espoused by Jack Teixeira, who recently stole and leaked a trove of classified information to impress his private online community. Teixeira, currently in custody and potentially facing a 25-year sentence, reportedly believed that the United States was heading toward a “race war” that would pit white people against racial and ethnic minorities and LGBTQ people.

CNN reports:

As the Pentagon grapples with the aftermath of the leak, the working group’s stated objectives look eerily prescient, and, in some cases, tailor-made to zero-in on the sort of anti-government, White supremacist behavior and views espoused by Teixeira.

CNN interviews with multiple sources familiar with the working group reveal that the Pentagon largely abandoned the effort to combat extremism in its ranks, as senior officials folded under political pressure from Republicans who lashed out at the initiative as an example of so-called wokeism in the military.

The U.S. military has a long history of white supremacism in the ranks, including among veterans who have started or joined far-right terrorist groups after their service. More than 80 people charged with participating in the January 6 insurrection had ties to the military, primarily as former service members, according to CBS News.

The apparently successful right-wing effort to sideline Bishop’s group follows the standard conservative playbook of smearing Democratic government officials who are Black, LGBTQ, Muslim, or from other marginalized groups as internal enemies, and it will also likely serve as a template for future, similar campaigns. Right-wing media outlets have spent months convincing their consumers that the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security, and the IRS are persecuting conservatives, with the clear aim of operationalizing these federal agencies against these media figures’ opponents — exactly what they wrongly accuse the Biden administration of doing. This programming dovetails exactly with Rep. Jim Jordan’s (R-OH) subcommittee on the weaponization of the federal government, which claims to be exposing a governmentwide conspiracy to throttle conservative activists and ideas. The committee has so far failed on its own terms, but Jordan remains undeterred.

Anatomy of a smear campaign

On February 16, 2021, Garrison was appointed to a newly created role to advise Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin on how to reduce and mitigate the threat of white supremacy in the U.S. military. The announcement went largely unremarked upon in both mainstream and conservative media for several weeks.

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Then on May 5, conservative website Revolver published a story headlined “Meet Bishop Garrison: The Pentagon’s Hatchet Man in Charge of Purging MAGA Patriots and Installing Race Theory in The Military.” The site's founder, Darren Beattie, tweeted the piece out, highlighting the quote “The Biden administration has just put the equivalent of Ibram X. Kendi in charge of vetting the entire U.S. military." (Beattie was fired from the Trump administration in 2018 after CNN discovered that he had attended a white nationalist conference two years prior.)

The following day, Fox News Primetime’s host Pete Hegseth devoted a segment to Garrison’s appointment,describing Garrison’s effort as “a purge, a purge of the Defense Department led by a new, and now powerful, radical leftist, a 1619 Project activist, a hardcore social justice Democrat, a man who believes all Trump supporters are racist and extremists."

Video

CitationFrom the May 6, 2021, edition of Fox News' Fox News Primetime

Hegseth then referred to Garrison as “the Pentagon's newly minted MAGA purge man” and cribbed Revolver’s line nearly verbatim but without attribution.

“How do I put this?” Hegseth asked. “The White House just put the equivalent of Ibram X. Kendi, the author of How to Be an Antiracist, in charge of vetting the entire U.S. military, past, present, and future."

A day later, Beattie appeared on Hegseth’s program to discuss Revolver’s piece, which largely consisted of Garrison’s tweets and other writings and social media posts.

Video

CitationFrom the May 7, 2021, edition of Fox News' Fox News Primetime

Beattie framed the issue by calling Garrison’s working group an example of “the most disturbing trend in American politics,” which is “that increasing swathes of our own national security apparatus have been repurposed and redeployed domestically against American citizens.”

Days later, conservative media websiteJust the News published a story that highlighted Hegseth’s comments from his initial segment.

On May 13, Revolver published another piece on Garrison with the factually incorrect headline “‘Free Speech Is A Digital Black Plague’: Bishop Garrison is Key Mercenary in Biden’s Dark War Against The First Amendment.”

Despite the quotation marks in the headline, the piece doesn’t include any evidence that Garrison wrote or spoke that exact phrase. Instead, the piece links to an op-ed Garrison published about the dangers of ideological polarization in news consumption leading to the spread of bad information, a fitting if ironic topic given Revolver’s mischaracterization of his stance. It’s true he described what he characterized as partisan echo chambers as a “digital black plague” that poses a danger to social cohesion, a relatively pedestrian observation common among mainstream commentators.

The next day, Beattie appeared on Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast to discuss Garrison’s purview more broadly.

Video

CitationFrom the May 14, 2021, edition of Real America's Voice's War Room

Underscoring the siloed, self-perpetuating conservative media echo chamber, Bannon introduced the topic by claiming, “I’m seeing it everywhere — Just the News has got it, the great Pete Hegseth had it, then he had a second night with you on it,” before asking Beattie for an update.

Beattie then recycled his website’s misleading framing with a rhetorical sleight-of-hand, substituting Garrison’s actual point about information silos with the false claim that he opposed free speech protections more broadly.

Beattie described Garrison’s purported role “in the Biden administration’s dark war on the First Amendment. We’ve uncovered a article of his calling, basically, the free speech digital environment that would include War Room, that would include Revolver, but also in his words includes the Sinclair Network and Fox, as a ‘digital black plague’ — those are his words to describe the digital free speech environment that enables the American people to see narratives that oppose the official narratives on COVID, on the election, and now on [the insurrection of] 1/6.”

One day later, Fox News’ Jesse Watters picked up the story, interviewing Hegsethabout Beattie’s reporting, adding another link in the human-centipede-esque food chain of bad information.

Video

CitationFrom the May 15, 2021, edition of Fox News' Watters' World

Watters introduced Garrison as being “in charge of bringing critical race theory into our Armed Forces,” adding, “They’re calling him the Pentagon's hatchet man because his job is to purge patriots from the ranks.”

“This is about, Jesse, as scary as it gets,” Hegseth responded. “I mean, really this is, this truly is a purge of patriots. They're using January 6 as the ultimate justification.”

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Two days later, former Fox News marquee star Tucker Carlsondiscussed Garrison on his prime-time show.

Video

CitationFrom the May 17, 2021, edition of Fox News' Tucker Carlson Tonight

Carlson referenced Revolver’s posts before characterizing Garrison as “an activist type” and “a lunatic.”

“Now — and this is the point — he is one of the most powerful officials in the U.S. military,” Carlson added. “Democrats in Congress are thrilled as they watch this. Their party now has all the tanks and drones.”

The campaign against Garrison continued at that pace for weeks, misleading framing and bad information congealing into an impenetrable narrative of conservative persecution. Beattie returned to War Room, right-wing Epoch TV covered the story, Carlson aired another segment on it, and Hegseth continued to beat the drum on Fox News.

As late as October 2022, Beattie referenced Garrison on War Room as an antecedent to a supposedly even more “outrageous” Pentagon commission on recommending changes to military bases named after members of the Confederacy.

Taken as a whole, this process clearly demonstrates how right-wing media will vigorously oppose efforts to mitigate widespread white supremacy and later defend the subsequent, predictable outcomes that ideology and set of power relations produces. As but one example, former Fox News host Tucker Carlson defended Teixeira’s actions by misleadingly casting him as a whistleblower when in fact there is no reporting to suggest he ever meant for the information he stole to be made publicly available. The fact that Teixeira’s bigoted beliefs went unnoticed and undisciplined by the military is a feature, not a bug, of this dynamic.

There are fair criticisms to be made about the larger White House initiative, such as asking what it would mean to root out white supremacy from an institution that has been at the forefront of U.S. empire expansion, directed primarily at nonwhite populations, since at least the Mexican-American War. Needless to say, conservatives were making the exact opposite critique, arguing that attempts to decrease the spread of white supremacist beliefs among service members are inherently illegitimate.

That the boilerplate backlash was successful despite being led by such mediocrities as Pete Hegseth and Darren Beattie — whom Bannon recently derided as a man-child— does not speak particularly well of the Biden administration. It also suggests that these demonization campaigns can potentially succeed absent any shimmering talent leading the charge, instead relying on mid-level functionaries in the larger conservative ecosystem repeatedly hammering the point home.

---

some lnx

Right-wing media outlets and personalities leveled repeated attacks against a modest Pentagon initiative created in 2021 to address high levels of white supremacy in the military, ultimately neutralizing the effort and leading to the unit’s abandonment. The conservative campaign was directed at military veteran Bishop Garrison, who led the Countering Extremism Working Group, which has now “vanished virtually without a trace,” according to a recent report from CNN.

CNN reports:

As the Pentagon grapples with the aftermath of the leak, the working group’s stated objectives look eerily prescient, and, in some cases, tailor-made to zero-in on the sort of anti-government, White supremacist behavior and views espoused by Teixeira.

CNN interviews with multiple sources familiar with the working group reveal that the Pentagon largely abandoned the effort to combat extremism in its ranks, as senior officials folded under political pressure from Republicans who lashed out at the initiative as an example of so-called wokeism in the military.

Anatomy of a smear campaign

On February 16, 2021, Garrison was appointed to a newly created role to advise Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin on how to reduce and mitigate the threat of white supremacy in the U.S. military. The announcement went largely unremarked upon in both mainstream and conservative media for several weeks.

The following day, Fox News Primetime’s host Pete Hegseth devoted a segment to Garrison’s appointment, describing Garrison’s effort as “a purge, a purge of the Defense Department led by a new, and now powerful, radical leftist, a 1619 Project activist, a hardcore social justice Democrat, a man who believes all Trump supporters are racist and extremists."...

beattie framed the issue by calling Garrison’s working group an example of “the most disturbing trend in American politics,” which is “that increasing swathes of our own national security apparatus have been repurposed and redeployed domestically against American citizens.”

Days later, conservative media website Just the News published a story that highlighted Hegseth’s comments from his initial segment.

On May 13, Revolver published another piece on Garrison with the factually incorrect headline “‘Free Speech Is A Digital Black Plague’: Bishop Garrison is Key Mercenary in Biden’s Dark War Against The First Amendment.”

The next day, Beattie appeared on Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast to discuss Garrison’s purview more broadly...

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cf naacp

https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/fox-news-jesse-watters-claims-florida-one-state-where-black-americans-are-thriving

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https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/fox-news-**jesse-watters-tells-house-republicans-force-joe-biden-resign-or-were-going-blowup debt limit

https://www.mediamatters.org/sean-hannity/sean-hannity-instructs-republicans-not-be-scared-defaulting-national-debt

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not 1st x

https://www.mediamatters.org/jesse-watters/fox-news-host-jesse-watters-pushes-great-replacement-theory

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zuck and edgelord musk bring him back for bucks

https://www.mediamatters.org**/facebook/trump-used-his-reinstated-facebook-page-post-misinformation-**filled-statement-response-his indict

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https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/fox-news-returns-barricades-indicted-donald-trump

If Donald Trump watched Fox News tonight, after a New York grand jury made him the first former president in history to be indicted, he was surely pleased with what he saw. Trump needs Fox to play its old role — run interference, denounce his foes, and thus keep the Republican Party squarely behind him — and that’s exactly what the network did in the hours after news of the indictment broke.

The indictment, which has not yet been unsealed, was the result of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s probe into the $130,000 hush money payment made in the closing weeks of the 2016 presidential campaign to Stormy Daniels, an adult film actor who has since said that she and Trump had an affair (Trump denies it). The former president responded in a statement calling the indictment “political Persecution and Election Interference at the highest level in history” and denouncing Bragg, the Democratic Party, and President Joe Biden.

Trump needs a powerful propaganda apparatus with a uniquely powerful hold on the GOP to hammer that message home and keep Republican politicians from abandoning him at yet another moment of disgrace.

He’s got one.

Minutes after news of the indictment broke — without seeing the indictment or knowing what Trump has been charged with — a parade of his Fox allies started furiously spinning on his behalf.

On The Five, Jesse Watters reacted to the breaking news by saying, “The country's not going to stand for it,” while Greg Gutfeld said the indictment showed Democrats are “hunting” Republicans.

On Special Report, Fox contributor Jonathan Turleycalled it a “raw political prosecution” while fellow contributor Mollie Hemingway compared it to “the Stalin era” and said that “people who care about the country need to stand up and make sure that they let it be known that they do not support this type of political prosecution.”

On Jesse Watters Primetime, Watters suggested “prosecuting Democrats the way they prosecute Republicans” when the party next gains the White House and said that in light of the Trump indictment, conservatives “can’t live in Democratic-run cities” without fear of political prosecution. Fellow Fox host Dan Bongino said it showed “we’re living in a police state” and Jeanine Pirro declared that the indictment “reeks of Third World country tactics,” adding that Trump “is being persecuted, not just prosecuted, but persecuted.”

Tucker Carlson Tonight brought the network’s biggest star saying that “there’s no coming back from this moment” as a country, describing the indictment as a “political purge” that has suspended the rule of law for his supporters and as “an assault on our system,” and running “Third-World banana republic” chyrons.

Hannity and The Ingraham Angle will surely feature more of the same.

We’ve seen this pattern play out the same way every time Trump’s actions have resulted in scandal since he became the Republican nominee in 2016.

Fox rallied to Trump’s side as he promoted lies and conspiracy theories about election fraud in 2020; amid the cornucopia of scandals involving his bigotry; when he corruptly pressured a foreign power to take action to benefit his political campaign, leading to his first impeachment; as he pardoned political cronies and war criminals; after he expressed support for white nationalists and Proud Boys; when he fired FBI Director James Comey for refusing to end the Russian interference probe; as a series of women came forward reporting he had sexually assaulted or harassed them; when a tape emerged of him discussing his sexual assaults of women; and so many more.

Each time, Fox’s support was crucial to keeping the Republican Party united behind him.

Trump’s indictment marks yet another opportunity for Fox to change course. Trump leads in polls for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, but he’s not the only one in the race or likely to join it. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, the second-place candidate in those polls, has spent years cozying up to Fox hosts and adopting their pet interests — and he’s not under indictment. Rupert Murdoch, the chair of Fox Corp., has an iron grip on the network’s operations and said after the January 6 insurrection that Fox should try to make Trump a “non person” and “certainly don’t support him.”

But that’s not what happened.

Fox continued to protect Trump after the storming of the U.S. Capitol, concocting absurd conspiracy theories to turn the rioters Trump had incited into victims. The network supported him again after the FBI searched Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort and residence and found hundreds of classified documents, offering incendiary claims that any criminal probe into the former president is intrinsically corrupt and part of an attack on his voters. And after Trump claimed earlier this month that he was on the verge of being indicted by Bragg, Fox personalities once again mounted the barricades on his behalf.

What we saw tonight shows that Fox won’t abandon him now either. Fox’s hosts and executives are in too deep, and they know that if he tried, Trump could destroy them with their viewers. They will have his back, no matter what, to the bitter end.

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via rww

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/offshore-wind-moratorium-whale-deaths_n_642599d9e4b02a8d518d12f0

no pix lnx twt

federal officials have repeatedly stressed that there is no evidence linking offshore wind development along the East Coast to a recent string of whale deaths.

Regardless, GOP lawmakers are citing those deaths in an effort to ban offshore wind — the latest in a growing, misinformation-rich campaign to stymie a ballooning renewable energy sector that stands to compete with America’s powerful oil and gas industry.

:{:{“The current system in place has allowed offshore wind to move forward too quickly & too recklessly in an attempt to solidify the legacies of green new deal advocates,”Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-N.J.) wrote in a Twitter thread last week. “They hurt the environment, raise energy prices, & will destroy existing industry.”}:

Van Drew is part of a group of Republicans who introduced a resolution this month that calls for an immediate federal moratorium on offshore wind leasing and construction activity pending the outcome of an investigation to “determine the true impacts” of this development.}:

The resolution specifically notes that 23 dead whales have washed up along the East Coast since December and accuses regulatory agencies of having “an unclear process for determining all contributing causes of death of whales through necropsies.”

Along with Van Drew, the measure currently has five other GOP co-sponsors: Reps. Marjorie Taylor Green (Ga.), Andy Harris (Md.), Chris Smith (N.J.), Scott Perry (Pa.) and Anthony D’Esposito (N.Y.).

[ pix Offshore wind energy opponents gather during a "Save the Whales" rally on Feb. 19 in Point Pleasant, New Jersey.]

To be clear, there are a lot of unknowns about how offshore wind will impact wildlife and marine ecosystems in the short and long term. Like all other offshore industries, wind development has the potential to disrupt and harm whales and otherwise negatively impact the ocean environment.

But the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and independent scientists have for months been pushing back against sweeping claims that offshore wind activities, including sonar surveys, are to blame for recent whale deaths. Such misinformation has featured prominently on Fox News and other conservative media in recent months.

“When you think about this obsession with green energy — the argument is always like ‘oil and gas is so bad for the environment,’” Fox News host Laura Ingraham said on her show March 10. “How ironic that what they are doing is almost certainly killing large swaths of the whale population.”

Greene, one of Congress’ proudest conspiracy theorists, has peddled similar nonsense. In an interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity in February, she claimed — again, without evidence — that whales are washing up because of “wind farms that are being placed all over the ocean.”

“People are calling the alarms over how [wind farms] are not only killing unknown thousands of bird species but also causing whales to beach themselves at record numbers,” Greene said.

There are only two small wind farms in operation in U.S waters, one off the coast of Rhode Island and another off Virginia. Together, they have just seven turbines and a capacity of 42 megawatts.

More than a dozen other large-scale projects are in various stages of permitting and development, but none are currently under construction — a reality that makes the conservative narrative particularly deceitful.

As part of a broader climate agenda, the Biden administration set a goal of securing 30 gigawatts of offshore wind energy by 2030, enough to power 10 million homes for a year and cut 78 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions. So far, it has granted final approval to two major offshore wind projects: the long-stalled Vineyard Wind project off the coast of Massachusetts, and South Fork Wind project off Rhode Island.

The recent whale strandings are part of what federal authorities have classified as an “unusual mortality event” that dates back to 2016.

“At this point, there is no evidence that noise resulting from wind development-related site characterization surveys could potentially cause mortality of whales, and no specific links between recent large whale mortalities and currently ongoing surveys,” reads an FAQ on the NOAA’s website.

Rather, officials have pointed to vessel strikes and entanglement in fishing gear— the two biggest human threats to whales, including humpbacks and the critically endangered North Atlantic right whale.At least 190 humpback whales have died along the East Coast since 2016. Forty percent of the animals that underwent necropsies showed signs of being struck by a boat or an entanglement.

“Since December 1, 2022, injuries consistent with vessel strike were identified in many of the animals necropsied,” Lauren Gaches, spokesperson for NOAA Fisheries, told Inside Climate News this month.

Conservative lawmakers and media outlets are following the lead of fossil fuel-allied groups in exploiting whales to fight offshore wind. As HuffPost reported in November, anti-offshore wind groups, including some of the nation’s most hard-line climate change denial outfits, have branded themselves guardians of the endangered right whale as they threaten legal action against newly approved offshore wind projects.

:{:{}:

Meanwhile, these same groups have advocated for increased offshore drilling while remaining silent about the documented threats to whales posed by oil and gas development. The NOAA estimates that 22% of the population of the endangered Rice’s whale in the Gulf of Mexico was lost as a result of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill.}:

[The Block Island Wind Farm off Rhode Island is the first commercial offshore wind farm in the United States.

Those groups include the Heartland Institute and the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, better known as CFACT,both of which have long histories of peddling climate change disinformation and cheerleading for the fossil fuel industry. In one of the more ironic and laughable moves of this anti-wind crusade, Peter Murphy, a senior fellow at CFACT, labeled the Biden administration “deniers” on par with the tobacco industry.

“As with the tabacco [sic] companies of yesteryear that disputed their product caused cancer, the Biden NOAA and climate-change cohorts are deniers, claiming there is ‘no evidence’ off-shore wind sites are harming whales,” Murphy wrote in a March 18 post to CFACT’s website, without presenting evidence to the contrary. “Rather, the agency attributes some of whale fatalities to ‘pre-mortem vessel strike,’ while conceding ‘more research is needed.’”

It is no secret that the tobacco and fossil fuel industries have a shared playbook for downplaying and dismissing the harm they have caused. In fact, a trove of documents compiled in 2016 by the Washington-based Center for International Environmental Law, or CIEL, showed that tobacco and oil giants have worked collaboratively for over half a century, sharing marketing and advertising strategies, research institutes, PR firms and even scientists.

:{:{}:

CFACT is a member of the Cooler Heads Coalition, a group of conservative charities and nonprofits “focused on dispelling the myths of global warming,” according to its website. Between 1997 and 2007, CFACT received nearly $600,000 from oil giant ExxonMobil.}:

Few if any oil companies have done more to sow doubt about human-caused climate change than ExxonMobil.

In this July 31, 2010, file photo, a dolphin swims through an oil sheen from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill off East Grand Terre Island, where the Gulf of Mexico meets Barataria Bay, on the Louisiana coast.

In his post, Murphy concluded that “at the very least, there needs to be a moratorium on construction of off-shore wind turbines, which from a climate perspective alone are ineffective and a colossal waste, and now hazardous to the largest mammals on the planet.”

:{:{}:

Three days later, Republicans introduced their resolution for an offshore wind moratorium.}:

Among other things, the resolution declares that “Atlantic coast offshore wind leases represent a transformative industrialization of vital environmental and maritime resources of the United States.”

There is no question wind farms will industrialize large swaths of U.S. waters. But one of the biggest threats to global ocean health is the burning of planet-warming fossil fuels. Oceans have absorbed an estimated 93% of the excess heat from human-caused climate change. This ocean warming has come with devastating impacts, from mass bleaching of coral reefs to the collapse of fisheries.

The NOAA notes on its website that whales, including the endangered right whale, are particularly vulnerable to climate change, as warming ocean temperatures impact the availability of zooplankton and other prey.

Without a herculean global effort to shift away from fossil fuels and halt planetary warming, scientists warn the impacts to the ocean and marine life will continue to mount.

“The percentage of animal species exposed to potentially dangerous conditions increases significantly the faster the world warms,” climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe tweeted this month, summarizing a finding of the latest United Nations climate report. “In general, ocean species like coral and tropical species are most at risk.”

Offshore wind could ultimately help rein in fossil fuel emissions and combat the global crisis — if disinformation doesn’t get in the way.

Media Matters, a media watchdog group, published a report last week that found that of the 288 Facebook posts from right-wing media in January and February that mentioned wind energy, a whopping 84% included unsubstantiated claims that offshore wind farms impact whale populations. The most popular post was a clip from Fox News’ Jesse Watterstitled “Wind Surveying is KILLING our Whales.”

Republican Party

renewable energy

Whales

wind power

Climate Deniers Exploit Endangered Whales In Bid To Kill Offshore Wind

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aha? antifa blm merge

https://www.mediamatters.org/tucker-carlson/fox-news-and-right-wing-media-circulate-seemingly-inauthentic-antifa-poster

pix of poster bring rocks ...

mma 1 23

protests emerged around the country following the release of police body camera footage of officers fatally beating Tyre Nichols, Fox News and other right-wing media sources promoted an “antifa poster” whose authenticity has not been proved. The poster supposedly called for protesters to “burn it all down” and bring rocks and heavy objects to riots in New York City.

The image was initially shared in a Daily Mail article, which called it “a shocking poster,” and on Twitter by user Rob O’Donnell, per disinformation researcher Caroline Orr.

On January 27, Fox News’ Jesse Watters hosted O’Donnell, who said he knows the poster was “put out by antifa” and it’s “calling for protests and riots at all police precincts across the city, to bring rocks, to bring pipes, to bring box cutters,” saying it’s “circulating in the underground of New York City.”

Video

In the next hour, Fox host Tucker Carlson showed the poster, using it to suggest there is “an organized militia encouraging organized violence across the United States of America.”

Carlson’s guest during the segment, former Detroit Police Chief James Craig, told Carlson the police should have “zero tolerance” for antifa protesters and chastised “Biden’s DOJ” for doing “absolutely nothing” about antifa, who he said are “threatening cities across this country.”

Carlson also suggested the poster was evidence of a “criminal conspiracy” by antifa.

Carlson’s commentary was circulated by right-wing blogs The Daily Caller and The Gateway Pundit, and FoxNews.com promoted his segment with Craig.

Video 1 27

With the poster on screen, Fox correspondent Christina Coleman saidon The Ingraham Anglethat “antifa put out this bulletin, calling for violence, even though Tyre's own family has called for peace.”

The poster was also picked up by other right-wing outlets.

On Newsmax, host Lidia Curanaj said “a police source” sent her “a flyer that showed that antifa was organizing throughout the country” but did not show it on screen. She speculated that “a lot of times these horrible incidents, like what happened to Tyre Nichols, are amplified and used by other organizations in order to achieve their political agenda.” Later on the network, Curanaj repeated that the protests must have been planned ahead of time, accused the protests of having “professional agitators,” and called on the media to “do their due diligence and actually investigate” the situation.

The poster also appeared on far-right website The Post Millennial, in an article titled “Antifa vows to 'burn it all down' in NYC following death of Tyre Nichols,” which cites the Daily Mail as having obtained the poster. Neo-Nazi collaborator and Twitter personality Jack Posobiec shared the article on Twitter.

Right-wing commentary siteTownhallshared O’Donnell’s tweet, including the image in a Friday night piece warning about “potential riots” in Memphis.

Newsmax’s Justine Brooke Murray shared the poster on Twitter, writing, “ANTIFA terrorists plan to burn down New York tonight. They’re blasting THIS out.”

Right-wing radio host David Webb on Twitter claimed the image showed that “violence is not a solution but it is a possibility.”

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mma 1 23

In an embarrassing attempt to undermine renewable energy, Fox host Jesse Watters platformed a fossil fuel industry-funded envoy flimsily disguised as an “ocean advocate” for Protect Our Coast NJ. Watters hosted self-described “Jersey Shore Lifer” Mike Dean, although he was misidentified on-screen as Mike Davis. Dean’s Twitter account demonstrates opposition to climate science, frequently retweeting Big Oil shill Steve Milloy and “#climatescam” posts.

dean – without evidence – blamed recent whale deaths in New Jersey on wind development and claimed, “The harms with these projects and the costs are limitless, and it’s really hard to find any benefits at all.” (While the cause of the deaths are not known yet, factors including oceanic plastic pollution, the presence of an anomalously large whale population in the area for this time of year due to warmer waters, and underwater sonar use by the military could all lead to these “unusual mortality events.”)

While Protect Our Coast NJ’s website boasts the group as “residents, homeowners, business owners, fishermen and visitors of the New Jersey coastal communities,” reporting has indicated that other interests are playing a part in the group’s activities. Popular Information’s Michael Thomas reported that the donation page redirects to a PayPal page for the Caesar Rodney Institute. The website also links to content from right-wing media’s favorite climate contrarian Michael Shellenberger. The Caesar Rodney Institute is a part of the State Policy Network, a network of conservative and libertarian think tanks.

The Caesar Rodney Institute has a history of hostility toward government environmental regulation and climate change mitigation policies. In 2021, the Caesar Rodney Institute’s Energy and Environment director, David Stevenson, a former member of the Trump EPA transition team, established the American Coalition for Ocean Protection (ACOP), a legal defense fund for groups to file lawsuits to fight offshore wind developments on the Eastern Seaboard. In 2022, the ACOP announced a partnership with Marc Morano’s Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow and the Heartland Institute to fend off a coastal Virginia offshore wind project.

As reported by The Intercept’s Lee Fang, the Caesar Rodney Institute has received funding from the American Energy Alliance, which in return was funded by fossil fuel insiders like the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers and Stand Together Chamber Commerce, a Koch Industries business trade group.

---

https://www.mediamatters.org/jesse-watters/jesse-watters-most-egregious-attacks-against-women-2022

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david Mack @ BuzzFeed: A Special Counsel Will Decide Whether To Charge Trump With Crimes.
Caroline Kitchener, Amy B Wang and Michelle Boorstein @ The Washington Post: Trump would act ‘like a little elementary schoolchild,’ former spiritual adviser says.
Michael Luciano @ Mediaite: Jesse Watters Tells Americans to Procreate So We Don’t Need ‘Foreigners to Have the Babies’.
Daniel Desrochers @ The Kansas City Star: Pompeo goes after Trump while mulling presidential bid, says he’s ‘tired of losing’.
Media Matters: Matt Walsh claims genetically modified food is partly to blame for the existence of trans people.
Liz Scheltens @ Vox: Why so many “election deniers” lost in 2022.

Tags: Donald Trump James Robison Jesse Watters Matt Walsh Mike Pompeo Round-Up

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mma 11 22

GREG GUTFELD (CO-HOST): This stuff doesn't bother me anymore. I mean, if we get upset about this, then we're the snowflakes that we've been making fun of forever. I mean, what did Trump say to protesters when he came in?

JESSE WATTERS (CO-HOST): Knock 'em out!

GUTFELD: Knock 'em out! And we found that magical.

WATTERS: We did, we did. I still do.

---

mma 10 22

Fox News personalities and guests have long attacked Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner, and now Pennsylvania lawmakers are trying to impeach him.

Earlier in September, the Pennsylvania House of Representatives sent Krasner a subpoena to hand over documents that pertain to the way he prosecutes crime, and Krasner refused to comply. Conservatives have attacked him over this and ultimately the state House voted to hold him in contempt. Krasner did partially comply with the subpoena despite calling it “undemocratic,” but he refused to hand over documents that might violate grand jury secrecy laws.

Now part of the push to impeach Krasner, who was overwhelmingly reelected in 2021, is a report that argues his policies contributed to a rise in Philadelphia’s crime rate. But criminology experts have taken issue with the report’s methodology, saying its conclusions are shaky. Texas A&M economics professor Jennifer Doleac wrote, “The errors are so egregious that publishing this article in this journal feels like malpractice.”

In reality, there does *not* seem to be a correlation between high crime rates and progressive prosecutors. In fact, one study shows that cities with progressive DAs actually saw slower growth in homicides and no correlation to high crime.

These discussions are lost in the right-wing echo chamber, where pundits relentlessly criticize progressive prosecutors. Right-wing media have singled out crime as a wedge issue to push conservative candidates onto voters, and their attacks have included district attorneys. Earlier this year, right-wing media successfully pushed for the recall vote of San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin, and now they are looking to Philadelphia as their next target.

Many Fox News personalities argued Krasner was failing in his role in prosecuting criminals, decontextualizing Philadelphia’s crime rate from national crime rates and citing total numbers of murders rather than per capita rates. This makes Philadelphia’s crime appear higher than it actually is since the city has a large population.

Right-wing media are calling for or justifying Krasner’s removal, blaming him for crime rates, and engaging in antisemitic fearmongering about a link to Jewish billionaire philanthropist George Soros:

Justifying and calling for Krasner’s removal

Fox News’ David Lee Miller uncritically cited the discredited report in his coverage of Krasner’s impeachment, saying, “A portion of their interim report says violent crime in Philadelphia increased to unprecedented and unacceptable levels during DA Krasner's watch.”
During an interview with Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), Fox anchor Harris Faulkner misleadingly cited total murder numbers as opposed to per capita numbers, saying, “The numbers don't lie. More than 380 murders in Philadelphia this year. New York and Los Angeles nearly as bad. The people want change. Those are blue cities. The people want change. Recall efforts are now underway to try to boot Krasner from his position.”
On October 25, Faulkner again promoted the attempt to oust Krasner: “Outrage in Philadelphia over liberal District Attorney Larry Krasner. A scathing nw report details his dismal failure to keep crime under control. He has been under pressure before. Now it's really on.”
Fox News host Jeanine Pirro attacked Krasner as “inept” and a “liar” before adding, “He should not be DA. He should be the public defender.”
Right-wing Pennsylvania radio host Chris Stigall called for arresting Krasner for not complying with a subpoena from the state legislature: “If we had a Republican governor like DeSantis in Florida you know what we'd do? At bare minimum suspend Larry Krasner if not outright arrest him today for not complying with the subpoena.”

Blaming Krasner for high crime rates

Fox News correspondent Bryan Llenas parroted GOP talking points, saying, “Republicans insist it has everything to do with Krasner. Since he was elected DA in 2017, the city's murder rate is up 70% while retail theft, armed robbery, property, and violent crime all continue to surge.”
Fox News anchor Julie Banderas claimed Krasner’s policies have failed, citing one example: “The latest example of Philadelphia's progressive district attorney Larry Krasner and his soft-on-crime policies are not working out. This is horrendous. A Philadelphia man — here’s just one example — who was exonerated for a 2012 murder in Philadelphia is now the suspect in a recent deadly shooting.”
Former GOP Senate candidate George Bochetto attacked Krasner on Fox & Friends, saying, “Larry Krasner, our district attorney, refuses to carry out his responsibilities. Refuses to enforce bail. Refuses to violate parole violators and put them back in jail.”
Fox News correspondent Nate Foy said: “Krasner is often blamed for the murder of Philadelphia police officer James O'Connor in 2020” because “Krasner's office let him [the shooter] walk free without bail.”

Linking Krasner to George Soros

Fox News host Tucker Carlson claimed there is “an attempt, of course, to destroy the middle class” with crime, adding, “So in Philadelphia a lot of these crimes can be traced to one man, Soros-backed DA Larry Krasner. He’s decided not to charge many robbers with crimes. … If you stop charging people with certain crimes, they commit more of them. That seems like an obvious observation. And again, it's more evidence this is not an accident.”
While discussing crime in Philadelphia, Fox News contributor Leo Terrell said: “The Democrats have abandoned the victims and for some crazy, perverted reason are backing the criminals. I can mention two words, George Soros, George Soros, George Soros, because his money is allowing these prosecutors to stay in office.”
Along with displaying a photo of Krasner, Fox host Laura Ingraham said: “So, as the bodies keep piling up needlessly in districts run by Soros-picked DAs, is it not worth asking, ‘What would save more lives today? Gun control, or recalling every DA that George Soros funded?’”
Fox & Friends Weekend co-host Will Cain fearmongered about Soros spending “$40 million in the past 10 years, to electing DAs like Alvin Bragg, Kim Fox in Chicago, Larry Krasner in Philadelphia. And by the way, that's only a sampling. Fifty percent of your district attorneys in the biggest cities across the country are elected with the backing of George Soros.”
Fox News host Jesse Watters said Krasner was “funded with big bucks by George Soros,” adding, “In Philly, where under Larry Krasner — they call him Uncle Larry — the city has seen a surge in violence.”

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mma 1020

JESSE WATTERS (HOST): Parents already have to deal withhigh crime and inflation and now they have to worry about demonic teachers turning their classroom into a drag show? You would think Biden, who is almost 80, would know better. But he doesn't. Maybe that's why they call him creepy Joe. The president, who is already in over his head, wasted his day chatting with a transsexual activist Dillon in the Oval Office about why children should be getting sex changes without their parents' permission.

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col day white supr dunk wedge

// rachel campos-d

https://www.mediamatters.org/jesse-watters/fox-news-host-mocks-american-indigenous-populations-not-having-strong-borders-when

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https://www.mediamatters.org/jesse-watters/fox-news-host-uses-hurricane-ian-mock-action-climate-change

7 27 show

JESSE WATTERS (HOST): Florida's in a state of emergency tonight as it frantically hunkers down before Hurricane Ian makes landfall. And the storm's a big deal. So, did Joe Biden call Ron DeSantis to get on the same page?

...

Maybe the reason Joe isn't talking with the leader of the state that's about to be devastated by this natural disaster is because he's already got the whole thing covered with the Inflation Reduction Act. Senator Amy Klobuchar laid it out for us clearly. There's no need to worry, people, because the Inflation Reduction Act and voting for Democrats is going to stop hurricanes. Listen.

[CLIP BEGINS]

SEN. AMY KLOBUCHAR: We just did something about climate change for the first time in decades. That's why we've got to win this as that hurricane bears down on Florida. We got to win in the midterms. We understand that.

[CLIP ENDS]

Is it just me or is Amy saying if you vote Democrat, she'll drive to Florida and nuke the hurricane herself?Just asking.

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mma 922

JESSE WATTERS (HOST): Remember when Congressman Matt Gaetz was smeared by the media and the Democrats? They said he was a criminal? He was a sex trafficker? But as time went on, it became clear they didn't have anything on him. There was never any evidence, and now listen to this. The Washington Post is reporting that prosecutors have advised against charging Gaetz with anything. Why? Because they don't think two key witnesses are credible.

Okay, so what happened here? Is this some just giant smear job? It doesn't even matter if they don't charge now. I mean, the damage has been done. He's got to clean up his reputation. But this is what the left always does. They'll concoct a story, feed it to the press. The media runs with it. They'll dangle charges. And then it's just done. Oh well. They did it to Trump. They did it to Kavanaugh.They did it to Gaetz. So, who's next?

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mma 922 tchr union

JESSE WATTERS (CO-HOST):Randi's a viper, isn't she? Isn't she a vicious woman? If you're supposed to be all about the children, wouldn't you want to work with every governor? And thatgovernor down there in Florida, he did right by the students. Florida students probably did the best of any of the students. He didn't shut down any of the schools. And then he let the parents decide whether or not they were going to mask or not.

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THE END OF strait? origin of greg g? and WATTERS?

https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/blockbuster-report-fox-executives-and-top-anchor-bret-baier-tried-subvert-decision-desk

matt g

Top Fox News executives interfered with the election projections of the network’s vaunted “decision desk” due to blowback from then-President Donald Trump, according to a new book. The reports — and the actions Fox took with regard to its decision desk following the 2020 election — demolish the network’s argument that its “news side” is a credible journalistic operation walled off from the “opinion side’s” Republican Party propaganda machine.

InThe Divider: Trump in the White House, 2017-2021, Peter Baker and Susan Glasser report that while Fox’s decision desk had been comfortable with its election night call that Joe Biden had won Arizona, “Fox executives were freaking out” that week as the network came “under tremendous pressure from Trump and his allies.” Fox’s call made it more difficult for Trump to subvert the election after declaring victory on election night, and he responded by successfully encouraging Fox viewers to switch to its competitors.

Jay Wallace, Fox’s president and executive editor, took a direct action overriding the decision desk in hopes of avoiding further criticism from Trump supporters on the Friday after election day, according to Baker and Glasser.

Wallace “overruled the Decision Desk team including Bill Sammon,Arnon Miskin, and Chris Stirewalt, refusing to let them call Nevada for Biden even after other networks did, a level of interference that had been unheard of in past elections,” they write. “The reason had little to do with Nevada. Because of the Arizona projection, calling Nevada would give Biden enough electoral votes for victory. Wallace did not want Fox to be the first to call the election and declare Biden president-elect.”

Wallace’s act followed two other proposals from senior Fox employees to interfere with the decision desk for Trump’s benefit, according to the book.

First, “at 8:30 the morning after the election, Suzanne Scott, the chief executive officer, even suggested that Fox should not call any more states until they were officially certified,” they reported. As Baker and Glasser noted, “official state certifications typically took days or even weeks and no network had ever waited until then before telling their viewers who had won.”

“A couple other top executives backed up Scott,” while Sammon, the Washington managing editor who directed the decision desk, advised against the move, according to the book. (That Sammon, who slanted Fox’s reporting to the right and bragged about falsely portraying Barack Obama as a socialist during the 2008 election,was the voice of reason here shows how far the network had gone.)

But two days later, they report that Fox chief political anchor Bret Baier sent Wallace an email arguing that Fox should reverse its Arizona call and instead project that Trump had won the state — even though he trailed at the time by more than 10,000 votes.

“The Trump campaign was really pissed,” he wrote in an email to Jay Wallace, the president and executive editor at Fox. “This situation is getting uncomfortable. Really uncomfortable. I keep having to defend this on air.” He accused the Decision Desk of “holding on for pride” and added: “It’s hurting us. The sooner we pull it—even if it gives us major egg [on our faces]—and we put it back in his column the better we are in my opinion.

Fox executives sell ads by touting the purported firewall between the network’s right-wing “opinion side” and its respectable “news side.” But here we have the network’s top “news side” anchor imploring the head of “news side” programming to make the “news side” decision desk fraudulently award a state to Trump because his campaign was demanding it. That says more about Fox’s role as GOP propaganda than any “opinion side” monologue. (In a statement, Baier denied writing that the Trump campaign “was really pissed,” claiming that the quote was “from an external email that I referenced,” but complained only of the “context” of the remainder of the quotes.)

Wallace didn’t follow through on Baier’s proposal, but according to Baker and Glasser he blocked the decision desk’s Nevada call the following day.The day after that, Fox saw the writing on the wall and followed CNN, ABC, CBS, and The Associated Press in declaring that Biden had won the election.

But that wasn’t the end of it. The network’s brass subsequently established an incentive structure that would dissuade similar “news side” threats to Fox’s bottom line.

Baker and Glasser report that Sammon and Stirewalt were then “summarily fired,” with the announcement delayed until January and described as a “retirement” and part of a “restructuring,” respectively.

Over the months that followed, “opinion side” hosts Greg Gutfeld and Jesse Watters, who had both questioned the network’s Arizona call, were given their own weeknight shows. They each took over time slots that had previously been occupied by “news side” programs. Other prominent election deniers were also promoted and given increased prominence at the network.

Everyone who works at Fox now knows that if they help Republicans try to steal an election, they’ll be richly rewarded. If they try to interfere with that effort by accurately stating that the Democrats won, the network’s top executives may overrule them and they will find themselves looking for a new job.

Fox’s decision desk is now just another piece of the right’s election subversion machine— one its executives can deploy at will — and its projections should be treated as such. Any future Fox election calls that diverge from other networks to the benefit of the GOP should be treated with extreme skepticism.

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omg rhet

https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/fox-news-laying-groundwork-next-insurrection-or-worse-telling-its-viewers-biden-waging-war

9/13

mma

On Monday evening, Fox News stars Tucker Carlson and Jesse Watters each used the 21st anniversary of 9/11 to tell their millions of viewers that the Biden administration has declared war on conservatives for their political beliefs.

Carlson and Watters argued, as the network has for months, that President Joe Biden’s Department of Justice is a tyrannical force bent on persecuting Fox News viewers, and that it’s only a matter of time before Democrats criminalize all political dissent.

Both defended the election denialism that has become core to the Republican Party after Trump’s loss in 2020, reinforcing the idea not only that the election was stolen, but also that those who say the election wasn’t rigged are jackbooted authoritarians.

Carlson approached the topic by playing a clip of Chuck Todd’s interview of Vice President Kamala Harris, in which she described how dangerous it is to have at least 11 election deniers running for secretary of state positions throughout the country. Typically the top statewide election official, the office is incredibly powerful, and those races have been flooded with cash as Republicans seek to install denialists to oversee upcoming elections.

Todd framed the interview, which was pegged to the anniversary of 9/11, as a discussion of how national security issues had evolved from external dangers to “the threat within.”

“Who is this threat?” Carlson responded. “Well, of course, it's you and anyone else in the way of the Biden administration.”

“And especially, as the vice president just said, and you saw it, anyone who questions the legitimacy of the last election,” he continued.

Carlson then added his own election conspiracism, arguing without evidence that “there are reasons not to believe” the final vote count, and that if a conservative voices that belief, under Biden, “you need to be pursued by law enforcement." [vid]

minutes later, Carlson brought up the Department of Justice issuance of roughly 40 subpoenas to top aides to former President Donald Trump, including white nationalist Stephen Miller.

Carlson argued that the Biden Department of Justice was trying to “suppress political dissent, to hobble an entire political party and to keep these people from ever participating in American politics again.”

One hour earlier, Watters had made a similar point. “This war on Republicans -- it's a war of choice,” he said. “It's a preemptive war so the Republican Party never wins another election. And that is the real threat to democracy." [vid]

fox News’ business model relies on stoking its viewers’ fears, and Monday’s segments come on the heels of months of similar coverage.

In late June, Carlson devoted an entire opening monologue to a lengthy mischaracterization of the legal cases of 14 conservatives, nearly all of whom were involved in some effort to overturn the 2020 election. “The signature tactic of the Biden administration … has been the criminalizing of American politics,” Carlson said at the time.

Carlson and others at Fox also spent part of the summer pushing a preposterous theory that Biden was hiring 87,000 new IRS agents to act as a paramilitary force against conservatives. A Media Matters study found that the network had pushed the bogus theory more than 200 times by the end of August.

Following the search of Trump’s residence and golf resort at Mar-a-Lago, Fox and other right-wing outlets and pundits characterized the DOJ’s actions as additional evidence that Biden was persecuting regular conservatives. “But the real target of this investigation isn't Trump,” Laura Ingraham said. “The real target of this investigation is you or anyone who dares to call out and take on the rank corruption of the D.C. establishment.”

Watters responded to the search by arguing that any attempt to hold Trump accountable wasin reality an attack on Fox viewers. “These are bloodthirsty savages who want to see you humiliatedand violated,”he said. “This is athreat to anybody who opposes them. Look what we can do to you. We can even storm into your president's home and take whatever we want.”

“They don’t need evidence,” Watters said in July, speaking broadly about various DOJ investigations into Trump. “Their goal is to scare you into submission.”

The overall implication of these arguments — that conservatives are being persecuted, and that the January 6 insurrection was really just about asking questions about vote totals — is not hard to understand. Fox News is laying the groundwork for future fascist violence, including but not limited to violence in response to elections won by Democrats.

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mma 9 22

Some of Fox News’ most influential commentators are misconstruing recent remarks from Vice President Kamala Harris and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, falsely claiming that the Biden administration is preparing for “war” against the Republican Party as Fox continues to push the fallacy that conservatives are being persecuted.

Fox News has relentlessly attacked Harris since she joined President Joe Biden’s ticket in 2020. In addition to a constant stream of racist and sexist remarks, the network has waged a war of manufactured outrage against Harris, either by claiming she was laughing at gas prices — when in reality she was just laughing at a meme — or by inexplicably blaming the vice president for Russia’s violent escalations against Ukraine.

During the September 11 edition of NBC’sMeet the Press, host Chuck Todd asked Harris, “We are now as a nation battling a threat from within. Is the threat equal or greater than what we faced after 9/11?” Harris replied that she had taken an oath to “defend and uphold our constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic” and that “we don’t compare the two in the oath, but we know they both can exist.” Harris also noted that she wished that domestic threats were not filtered through “some partisan lens,” but notably did not say domestic threats were more dangerous than the threat of terrorism during and after 9/11.[dan ball Hoe?]

Similarly, during an appearance on CNN’s State of the Union on September 11, Clinton reflected on “how important it is to try to deal with extremism of any kind, especially when it uses violence to try to achieve political and ideological goals.” (The network’s obsession with Clinton is well-documented.)

It didn’t take long for Fox News to latch on to the narrative that Harris, Clinton, and the Democratic Party writ-large had issued a “declaration of war” against MAGA Republicans.

During his prime-time show on Fox, Jesse Watters falsely claimed that the “Biden White House used this day to politicize the worst terrorist attack in American history and declare war on you.” He then baselessly characterized Harris’ vow to “defend against all enemies foreign and domestic” as a “declaration of war,” saying, “Make no mistake, the Democratic Party, the media, and obviously the FBI have designated the Republican Party as a terrorist group.”:{ Fox News, :(style="background-color:#ffffffff"):}:*Jesse Watters Primetime*:{, :(style="background-color:#ffffffff"):}:[9/12/22:{]}:
Tulsi Gabbard claimed that the Biden administration and the Democratic Party are “pushing our country to the brink of civil war.” Gabbard also claimed that Harris and others were “demonizing, targeting our fellow Americans as worse than Al-Qaeda terrorists” as a ploy to “hold on to their power:{.” Fox News, :(style="background-color:#ffffffff"):}:*Jesse Watters Primetime*:{, :(style="background-color:#ffffffff"):}:[9/12/22:{]}:
Fox host Tucker Carlson claimed that Harris’ comments about defending the constitution against domestic enemies amounted to a declaration of war against “you and anyone else in the way of the Biden administration.” Carlson also referred to the January 6 insurrection as an “election injustice protest” and called Todd a “freaking lunatic” for suggesting the United States has a “threat within.” Fox News, *Tucker Carlson Tonight*, [9/12/22]
On Hannity, former Trump press secretary Kayleigh McEnany claimed that Clinton had compared Republicans to terrorists during her appearance on CNN’s State of the Union. “Drawing a comparison between American citizens and the heinous monsters who committed one of the most evil acts in our country's history. That is despicable,” McEnany:{ said. Fox News, :(style="background-color:#ffffffff"):}:*Hannity*:{, :(style="background-color:#ffffffff"):}:[9/12/22:{]}:

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mma 9 22

While children’s hospitals were facing a deluge of violent threats in August from an online campaign of intimidation and misinformation fueled by anti-LGBTQ trolls, Fox News repeatedly provided a platform for the individuals responsible for the harassment to amplify their attacks. Over the course of two weeks, Fox News — the most-watched cable network in the country — spent more time and ran more segments targeting three different children’s hospitals over false claims about gender-affirming care than CNN or MSNBC combined spent discussing the attacks.

Led by conservative social media figures including Chaya Raichik and Matt Walsh, an online campaign began by targeting Boston Children’s Hospital and Children’s National Hospital in Washington, D.C., with false claims that they were providing hysterectomies for trans youth. The unsubstantiated claims were debunked by independent fact-checking websites and refuted by the hospitals, which did not stop right-wing media figures from taking up the attacks to malign all gender-affirming care for trans youth as “mutilation.”

In reality, these hospitals do not provide genital surgery to trans youth. Rather, they follow the standards of care established by national medical organizations, offering medically necessary care that is supported by every major medical organization in America.

Fox News amplified the architects of the harassment campaign that resulted in threats of violence against at least three different children’s hospitals

Amid the influx of threats against children’s hospitals, Fox News adopted the attacks as part of its ongoing effort to demonize trans health care for political points and at the expense of trans children.

Between August 18, when the network’s first segment attacking Boston Children’s Hospital aired, and August 31, when Fox aired its most recent segment, attacking Chicago’s Lurie Children’s Hospital, the network aired 7 segments and spent more than 20 minutes vilifying the hospitals. Notably, three of the Fox prime-time shows featuring the attacks are in the top 10 most-watched cable news programs in the country — Tucker Carlson Tonight, The Ingraham Angle, and Jesse Watters Primetime.

And while other Fox News prime-time shows similarly repeated anti-trans attacks on the children’s hospitals, Tucker Carlson’s program has been the most responsible for amplifying the misinformation campaign and the figures behind it.

On August 18, the day after Vice News reported that far-right extremists were threatening to execute doctors at Boston Children’s Hospital over lies told about their gender-affirming care program, Carlson invited Chris Elston onto his show. Elston, a Canadian anti-trans extremist whose tweet kicked off the attacks on Boston Children’s Hospital, erroneously claimed gender-affirming care was “the biggest child abuse scandal in modern medicine history,” while Carlson called the care “sexual mutilation of children."

[vid]

a week later, Fox News ran 5 segments attacking D.C.’s Children’s National Hospital after it was targeted with a similar smear campaign prompted by Raichik, whose Twitter account “Libs of TikTok” has been instrumental in fueling Fox News’ anti-LGBTQ messaging. After the hospital reported its staff had received threats of violence, Carlson invited Raichik onto the August 30 edition of his show.

During the segment, Carlson falsely claimed Children’s National Hospital was “castrating young people, minors for no legitimate purpose whatsoever” and asserted that Raichik was “committing actual journalism."

[vid]

the night Carlson’s interview with Raichik aired, Boston Children’s Hospital was targeted with a bomb threat.

The next night, propagandist Chris Rufo earned a spot on Carlson’s show after falsely claiming that Lurie Children’s Hospital was promoting “‘trans-friendly’ sex toys for children” based on a resource document provided exclusively to teachers.

Carlson opened the segment by saying, “Most people trust children's hospitals implicitly. They just didn't know the details — but thanks to the internet, we now do.” He went on to claim that “some of these hospitals are performing horrifying experiments on children,” including “things you think would be crimes but that apparently aren't and that are going on in children's hospitals in the United States." [vid]

fox News’ attacks on children’s hospitals have outpaced mainstream cable network’s coverage of the threats

Coverage of the targeted harassment and threats against multiple major children’s hospitals from CNN and MSNBC lagged behind Fox News’ attacks against the same facilities. Not only did Fox spend more time (over 20 minutes) attacking and spreading misinformation on children’s hospitals over gender-affirming care than the other two networks spent covering the attacks (less than 19 minutes), but no show on either mainstream network has aired more than one segment on the attacks. Meanwhile, Tucker Carlson Tonight alone has aired 3 segments attacking the hospitals. In fact, Carlson’s show spent more time (just under 12 minutes) attacking children’s hospitals than CNN spent discussing the attacks across all programming (just over 5 minutes). MSNBC spent just over 13 minutes discussing the story.

While Carlson repeatedly hosted guests pushing anti-trans misinformation against gender-affirming care, only one show segment on either CNN or MSNBC interviewed a medical professional. The August 18 edition of MSNBC’s The 11th Hour With Stephanie Ruhles**poke with a doctor about the struggle of providing essential health care for trans youth while facing a barrage of threats.

Methodology

...

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an 8 22

Moments after news broke that the Federal Bureau of Investigation had executed a search warrant at former President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida on Monday, Fox News pundits claimed that the raid was a politically-motivated hit to prevent Trump from getting reelected in 2024.

"You're going into the home of a presidential candidate. He hasn't announced yet but everybody assumes he's running for president. This is after they want after his campaign with wiretaps and other federal investigative raids. This is insane," host Jesse Watters said on Primetime.

Watters' guest, an ex-Central Intelligence Agency officer named Buck Sexton, responded: "it almost feels like a preemptive coup. We've heard so much about the insurrection and the coup, but this is preventing, this is meant to prevent Donald Trump from being able to run again."

Watch below or at this link.

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wiki 8 22

jesse Bailey Watters (born July 9, 1978) is an American conservative^[1] political commentator on Fox News. He frequently appeared on the political talk show The O'Reilly Factor and was known for his man-on-the-street interviews, featured in his segment "Watters' World", which would become its own show in 2015. In January 2017, Watters' World became weekly, and in April 2017, he became a co-host of the roundtable series The Five.In 2022, Watters became host of Jesse Watters Primetime.

In 2021, he published his first book, How I Saved the World.

Early life and education

Watters was raised in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania,^[2] son of Stephen Hapgood Watters, a teacher, and child psychologist Anne Purvis, daughter of Morton Bailey, Jr., publisher of Better Homes and Gardens magazine.^[3]Her grandfather, Morton Bailey, published The Saturday Evening Post;his father was the politician Morton S. Bailey. Watters's paternal grandfather, Dr Franklin Benjamin Watters, was a cardiologist at the Veterans Administration Hospital at Newington, Connecticut, and a professor at the University of Connecticut Medical Dental School. He has some Irish ancestry on his father's side. Watters is named after his mother's great-grandfather Jesse Andrew Burnett, an associate chief justice of the Kansas Supreme Court.^[4][5][6][7]

Watters grew up in the Germantown and then East Falls neighborhoods.^[8] He attended the William PennCharter School through junior year, before moving with his family to Long Island in New York.^[8] In 2001, he graduated from Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, with a B.A. in history.^[9]

Career

After his graduation, Watters began work as a production assistant at Fox News.^[10] In 2003, he moved to the production staff of The O'Reilly Factor,^[11] and in 2004 he began to appear on air in segments of O'Reilly's show.^[12]

On June 11, 2014, Watters debuted on the Fox News show Outnumbered, later occasionally appearing as a guest co-host. On November 20, 2015, Watters debuted his own monthly Fox News program, Watters' World.^[13] While Watters is characterized as an "ambush journalist",^[14][15][16] Watters has said, "I try to make it enjoyable for the person I'm interviewing. We always come away from the interview all smiles, for the most part. And it's always fun to come back and look at the footage and say, 'Oh my gosh, what just happened?'"^[8] In January 2017, Watters' World became a weekly show, airing Saturdays at 8 p.m. ET.^[17][18]

In April 2017, Watters became a co-host of the roundtable series The Five.

In April 2021, HarperCollinsannounced the publication of Watters's new book How I Saved the World, which was published on July 6.^[19] The book debuted at number one on *The New York Times* nonfiction best-seller list for the week ending July 10, 2021.^[20]

After serving as one of several rotating fill-in hosts in the network's 7 PM time slot, it was announced on January 10, 2022 that Watters would become the permanent host of a new primetime show, titled Jesse Watters Primetime, which debuted on January 24, 2022.^[21]

Watters' World ended on January 15, 2022, while Watters continues to serve as co-host of The Five.^[22]

Controversies

Amanda Terkel "ambush"

In 2009, on assignment for The O'Reilly Factor, Watters and his cameraman accosted journalist Amanda Terkel while she was on vacation to ask her questions about an article she wrote that was critical of Bill O'Reilly.

Seven years later, at a journalists' reception, The Huffington Post's Ryan Grim approached Watters with his phone camera running and asked him to walk over to Terkel and apologize. Watters at first said he would apologize and then said he wouldn't, adding, "I ambushed her because O'Reilly told me to get her because she said some bad shit."^[23][24][

Video of the incident shows Watters then grabbing Grim's phone and throwing it on the floor, and later grabbing it again and putting it in his pocket. Eventually, the two got into a shoving match, as Grim attempted to recover his phone. Watters later commented on the incident on The O'Reilly Factor, stating, "I was at this party trying to enjoy myself. This guy came up to me. He starts putting it in my face."^[25]

Terkel wrote that Watters's response was "surprising," considering that "Watters' way of confronting his subjects is to thrust cameras in their faces unexpectedly and pepper them with aggressive questions."^[23][25]

Chinatown segment

In October 2016, Watters was criticized for a segment of Watters' World that was widely considered racist toward Asian Americans.^[26][27] In New York City's Chinatown, Watters asked Chinese Americans if they knew karate (which originates from Japan, not China), if he should bow before he greets them, or if their watches were stolen.^[26][28] Throughout the segment, the 1974 song "Kung Fu Fighting" plays in the background, and the interviews are interspersed with references to martial arts and clips of Watters getting a foot massage and playing with nunchucks.^[27][28] New York City mayor Bill de Blasio denounced Watters's segment as "vile, racist behavior" that "has no place in our city".^[29][30] Numerous other lawmakers and journalists, including Asian Americans Mazie Hirono and Judy Chu, also condemned Watters.^[31] The segment was also criticized by the Asian American Journalists Association, which issued a statement saying, "We should be far beyond tired, racist stereotypes and targeting an ethnic group for humiliation and objectification on the basis of their race."^[32]

On October 5, Watters tweeted what Variety's Will Thorne called a "non-apology" about the segment. In the two tweets, Watters stated that "My man-on-the-street interviews are meant to be taken as tongue-in-cheek and I regret if anyone found offense. ... As a political humorist, the Chinatown segment was intended to be a light piece, as all Watters' World segments are."^[33][34][35]

John Podesta comments

In January 2017, Watters faulted John Podesta, Hillary Clinton's campaign manager, for the theft of Podesta's emails by Russian hackers, saying, "What happened was John Podesta gave his password to a hacker. And guess what his password was. 'Password.' It's a true story. His password was 'password.'"^[36] The fact-checking website PolitiFact rated Watters's claim "False."^[36]

Ivanka Trump comments

In April 2017, two days after joining The Five as co-host, Watters made an on-air comment about Ivanka Trump that was criticized as lewd. After viewing footage of Trump speaking on a panel about female entrepreneurship, Watters commented, "So I don't really get what's going on here, but I really liked how she was speaking into that microphone," as he parodied holding the microphone as a phallic symbol. Watters denied his comment was sexual, saying in a statement: "During the break we were commenting on Ivanka's voice and how it was low and steady and resonates like a smooth jazz radio DJ ... This was in no way a joke about anything else."^[37] In response to the criticism, Watters was not on the show for two days that week.^[38][39]

QAnon comments

In July 2020, Jesse Watters praised the conspiracy theory QAnon during his show, saying: "they've also uncovered a lot of great stuff when it comes to Epstein and it comes to the deep state. I never saw Q as dangerous as antifa." After public backlash, Watters released a statement saying: "I mentioned the conspiracy group QAnon, which I don’t support or believe in. My comments should not be mistaken for giving credence to this fringe platform."^[40][41]

Anthony Fauci comments

At Turning Point USA’s 2022 AmericaFest conference, while advocating for attendees to aggressively confront and question Dr. Anthony Fauci about his alleged funding of gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, Watters said, "Now you go in for the kill shot. The kill shot? With an ambush? Deadly. Because he doesn't see it coming."^[42][43] Fauci responded that Watters's remarks were "awful" and that Watters "should be fired on the spot".^[44][45] Fox News indicated their support for Watters, saying he "was using a metaphor", and that his comments "had been twisted completely out of context".^[42]

Emma DiGiovine deception

On April 11, 2022, during an episode of The Five, Watters said that he duped his now-wife, Emma DiGiovine, into spending time with him by intentionally letting the air out of her car tires and then offering her a ride in his vehicle.

When asked if that was the first time he had used that deception, Watters indirectly answered the question by saying "It works like a charm." When asked if his wife knew about this, Watters said “Now she does”. It has been reported that Watters was married to his first wife when this occurred.^[46][47][48]

On the April 25, 2022 episode of The Five, Watters appeared to clarify his remarks by saying that he was simply "joking" and that he "never deflated anyone’s tires”. He jokingly referred to this incident as "TireGate".^[49][50]

Personal life

Watters is registered to vote as a member of the Conservative Party of New York State.^[51] He married Noelle Inguagiato in 2009 and had twin daughters with her.^[52] Noelle filed for divorce in 2018 after Watters admitted to an affair with a producer on his show, Emma DiGiovine.^[52] Inguagiato and Watters's divorce was finalized in March 2019. Watters announced his engagement to DiGiovine in August 2019 and they married in December of the same year. Their son was born in 2021.^[53][54]

Bibliography

Watters, Jesse (2021). How I Saved the World.New York:Broadside Books. ISBN 978-0-06-304908-6. OCLC 1245249467.

References

...

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herbert london?

cpny

2020s

In 2020, the Conservative Party nominated incumbent Republican President Donald Trump for re-election to the presidency.^[75] Trump was defeated by Democrat Joe Biden.^[76] In 2021, the Conservative Party successfully teamed up with the Republican Party to raise opposition among the state's voters and defeat three ballot initiatives proposed by Democrats.^[77]

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8 22 gone for a yr?

https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/after-temporary-banishment-rep-matt-gaetz-once-again-fox-news-star-despite-his-situation

within the first three months of 2021, according to Media Matters’ internal database, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) made 37 weekday appearances on Fox News daytime and prime-time programming. At the time, Gaetz and Fox News enjoyed a symbiotic relationship: Gaetz would appear weekly to biweekly to lend his firebrand personality and shameless distortion of the truth to whatever culture or message war the network was pushing, and in turn, the network elevated his stardom and status as one of former President Donald Trump’s top henchmen.

On March 30, 2021, the relationship between the Trump loyalist and the network dramatically shifted when The New York Times reported that Gaetz was facing a Justice Department inquiry over allegedly engaging in a sexual relationship with an underage girl. Fox’s leading face, Tucker Carlson, responded to the bombshell report by hosting Gaetz for a softball interview in which the congressman professed his innocence and claimed the Times was “smearing” him based on a financial extortion plot against Gaetz and his family. (While a Florida businessman eventually pleaded guilty to wire fraud against the Gaetz family, the investigation into Gaetz’ relationship with underage women was separate, and The Daily Beastoutlined the numerous falsehoods Gaetz made in the interview.)

Gaetz also attempted to implicate Carlson by comparing his situation to false allegations against Carlson and suggesting Carlson had met a “friend” involved in the plot, leading the host to call it “one of the weirdest” interviews he’s ever done. This exchange landed Gaetz an informal excommunication from the network, forcing him off Fox airwaves until Carlson hosted him again, an exact year later, on March 30, 2022, to plead his innocence. Within the two last months, Carlson’s other prime-time colleagues Jesse Watters, Sean Hannity, and Laura Ingrahamhave all followed suit, hosting Gaetz with no mention of the scandal.

The Justice Department investigation is still ongoing, yet Fox has welcomed its former star back with open arms. As Gaetz’s scandals have deepened, it’s unclear what changed in the network’s calculation of the lawmaker’s suitability for its airwaves. At best, Gaetz’s increased appearances on Fox are another tool to fuel bad-faith Republican arguments, especially amid their desperate attempts to distract from the January 6 hearings. At worst, the network’s embrace of Gaetz represents a callous disregard for serious allegations, made particularly ironic given Fox’s recent homophobic campaign against the LGBTQ+ community under the pretense of protecting children from supposed groomers.

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an 7 22

no lnx

They're projecting': Fox News sparks outrage after calling teachers union the 'KKK with summers off'

Fox News host Greg Gutfield (screengrab/@justinbaragona/Twitter).

Meaghan Ellis

July 08, 2022

A co-host of Fox News’ The Five is facing deep criticism for her recent rant comparing the largest teachers union in the United States to the Ku Klux Klan.

During a recent segment of the show, Fox News' Jesse Waters and other co-hosts discussed a new published on Wednesday about the National Education Association's (NEA) latest proposal to "substitute the term “birthing parent” for the word “mother” in order to be “inclusive,'" according to The Daily Beast.

Although the association's members have not voted on the proposal, the Fox News headline displayed on the screen declared the proposal to be “woke insanity.” That's when Waters weighed in.

READ MORE: Fox News reported that Gavin Newsom violated California's travel ban. An analysis says otherwise

“You don’t change the English language to cater to 1 percent of the population, all right?” Watters said. “These people live in a very small fraction of this country, and I’m fine with it. It’s a free country. Do your thing. But that 1 percent has to accept that the whole rest of the country doesn’t do that thing. And they have to have a little humility and kind of jive with it.”

Co-host Dana Perino also chimed in with a claim about the term “birthing people” which she insists is “the new ‘Latinx.’” According to Perino, Democrats now realize that “didn’t make sense” it ultimately “alienated” potential voters.

:{:{}:

The co-hosts then moved on to discuss the actual role of the NEA as they criticized their perspective on “school choice.” That's when Greg Gutfeld attempted to compare the teachers union to the KKK.

“Anybody at this point who opposes school choice is protecting a destructive system that harms minorities who don’t have other options, and that makes them truly racist oppressors. The NEA is the KKK with summers off. It’s true. They’re racist,” claimed Gutfeld who previously expressed concern about comparisons of the KKK to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).}:

“If you are not allowing an opportunity for people who can’t afford a good education to have a good education, you are trapping kids in a life that does not get much better,” he continued. “You worry about gang crime and you worry about gun violence, but by that time it’s too late, right? Public school, man, they destroy a kid before he even gets there by opposing any kind of opportunity to escape it.”

READ MORE: Fox News could be subject to major financial setback as judge OKs lawsuit over false election claims: report

Shortly after the clip of Gutfeld's remarks began circulating on social media, Twitter users began weighing in with critical responses.

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https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/after-discrediting-report-10-year-old-ohio-girl-needing-abortion-foxs-jesse-watters-now

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an 7 22

Indiana's Republican Attorney General Todd Rokita told Fox News anchor Jesse Watters on Wednesday evening that he intends to open a criminal investigation into the provider who performed an abortion on a 10-year-old rape victim from Ohio that had to travel to The Hoosier State to obtain the procedure.

The girl was 45 days along and unable to terminate the forced pregnancy because The Buckeye State banned most abortions past six weeks – with no exceptions for rape or incest – immediately following the United States Supreme Court's right-wing majority decision retracting the constitutional right to abortion in its reversal of Roe versus Wade on June 24th.

Indiana allows abortions up until the 13th week as long as mandated conditions are met. Its rules are likely to tighten, however, when state lawmakers convene in an emergency session on July 25th to discuss post-*Roe*policy plans.

In Ohio, the restrictions are predicated on what legislators and anti-choice activists claim is the detection of a heartbeat. But that contention is not supported by empirical medical data.As an April 17th NBC News report noted, embryos have no structured heart at six weeks. Instead, there is "a tube that generates sporadic electrical impulses that eventually coordinate into rhythmic pulses."

Live Science also explained in detail last September that "after the detection of the flutter at six weeks, the heart muscle continues to develop over the next four to six weeks, undergoing the folding and bending that needs to happen for the heart to take its final shape."

On Tuesday, a 27-year-old suspect was taken into custody and confessed to twice assaulting the child. The arrest occurred while numerous Ohio Republicans – including Governor Mike DeWine, Attorney General Dave Yost, and Congressman Jim Jordan – were publicly suggesting that the story was a fabrication. The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board called the account "a fanciful tale." None of them have issued a formal apology in light of the accused rapist's capture.

Incidentally, Yost had expressed his doubts on Monday's Jesse Watters Primetime. During Wednesday's broadcast, Rokita blamed President Joe Biden's immigration policies for the crime despite the alleged perpetrator having lived in Columbus, Ohio for seven years.

"I shouldn't be here. I mean, first of all, this is an illegal immigration issue because likely of Biden's lawlessness at the border and everything going on down there. That's why Indiana as a non-border state has actually filed several independent lawsuits on that," Rokita said.

While justice for the victim may be served in an Ohio courtroom, Rokita is taking a much different approach in neighboring Indiana.

"Then we have the rape, and then we have this abortion activist acting as a doctor with a history of failing to report," he continued as Fox displayed a picture of the doctor who aided the underaged victim. "So we're gathering the information, we're gathering the evidence as we speak, and we're gonna fight this to the end, including looking at her licensure. If she failed to report in Indiana, it's a crime to not report, to intentionally not report."

Next, Rokita fired off several conspiracy theories.

"This is a horrible, horrible scene caused by Marxists and socialists and those in the White House who want lawlessness at the border. And then this girl was politicized – politicized – for the gain of killing more babies, alright? That was the goal,**" Rokita declared. "And this abortion **activist**is out there front and center. The**lame stream media – the fake news** – is right behind it and unfortunately in Indiana, the**paper of record is fake news** and they were right there jumping in on all this thinking that it was gonna be great for their abortionist movement when this girl has been so brutalized."

Watch below or at this link.

====

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Fox's Jesse Watters: Jeff Clark's crime was “he worked for Donald Trump”

06/24/22

WATTERS (HOST): Earlier this week, a former Trump justice official named Jeff Clark woke up to armed federal agents banging on his door. They dragged him outside in his pajamas and raided his house. His crime? He worked for Donald Trump. It's a longer story than that, but working for Trump may as well be a criminal offense when you look at what's happened over the last few years.Was Jeff Clark arrested and charged with anything? No. The Biden Justice Department just rummaged through his belongings and confiscated his electronics.

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rubber glue rt constant attributes bad behavior as defense/ reaction to dem bad acts

https://www.alternet.org/2022/06/fox-news-joe-biden-kavanaugh/

ncrm

fox News propagandistJesse Watters on Wednesday alleged President Joe Biden and other top Democrats may be behind the man who was arrested earlier that day who reportedly admitted he wanted to kill Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

“This could be a little criminal conspiracy,” Watters alleges, asking, “did the orders come all the way from the top?” JUST ASKING

For more than seven minutes Watters cobbled together various benign incidents from over the past two years in a clearly fictious narrative that draws the President, the Speaker of the House, the Senate Majority Leader, the White House Press Secretary, and a top Democratic Senator into what he baselessly suggests could be a conspiracy to kill a U.S. Supreme Court Justice.

Watters – who was highly criticized for using “violent rhetoric” by calling for a “kill shot” in interviews with Dr. Anthony Fauci – told Fox News viewers the man who he suggests is some high-powered hit man hired by the President, “got cold feet when he saw U.S. Marshals with arms guarding Kavanaugh’s house and called the cops on himself, telling them everything.”

“He says he was furious overRoe v. Wade possibly being overturned — remember the leak? — and was looking for purpose in his life,” Watters continues, as Media Matters reported. “So he found that purpose by going out and trying to kill a Supreme Court justice. Do you think that idea just popped into his head? Or did the orders come all the way from the top?”

Watters then tries to make his case, which amounts to “by Democrats’ own standards” there must be an investigation into this event because the left has accused Donald Trump of inciting the insurrection, Watters claims, merely by giving a speech at the January 6 rally.

By the end of his seven-minute-plus rant, Watters concludes:

“This is just the beginning, this summer is going to be ugly. That’s why we have to get to the bottom of this. This could be a little criminal conspiracy that needs to be investigated – again by the left’s own standards. We might have toappoint a commission. We might have to hold hearings,” he says, as if he is a member of Congress or DOJ official.

“We have a criminal leak,” Watters falsely claims, referring to the leak of the Supreme Court draft, which legal experts make clear was not criminal.

“We have a group that’s protesting outside [Kavanaugh’s] house. You have an attorney general that’s not doing anything about this,” he claimed, after earlier complaining that the protestors outside Supreme Court Justices’ homes should be arrested.

“You have a senator who’s agitating,” Watters claims, earlier referring to a March 2020 statement Senator Chuck Schumer made.

“You have a White House, who’s giving this license. Maybe time to put some people in leg shackles like they did to Navarro. These people incited violence possibly, we need to hold them accountable if they did. Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, Liz Warren, anybody who has their hands on this should face consequences again, by the left’s own standards. Don’t call me crazy. They set the rules. We’re just following.”

Watch:

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https://www.alternet.org/2022/02/fox-news-wild-wednesday/

an 2 22

no lnx vid

Fox News descended into utter insanity on Wednesday

Maria Bartiromo ignorantly asks Kevin McCarthy to 'look at the 25th Amendment' to remove Biden

Brandon Gage February 16, 2022

Today has been a wild one over in Fox News propaganda land, even by their standards. This morning, anchor Jesse Watters urged the United States to annex Canada to save it from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, whom Watters suggested is a communist. And he was serious.

“We have to finish the wall and build a fresh one in the north if this keeps up. Or we could just liberate the Canadians from their dictatorship,” said Watters. “It’s not like America hasn’t done that before. There’s room for a few more stars on the flag.”

Good luck with that.

The full eight-minute segment is below:

Watters: Trudeau getting his chance to play dictator

youtu.be

Meanwhile, on Mornings with Maria on Fox Business, host Maria Bartiromo accused President Joe Biden of manufacturing the crisis between Russia and Ukraine as a “ruse” to yank attention away from – who else? – Hillary Clinton.

Bartiromo expressed skepticism predicated on what “some Congressmen were telling me over the weekend” that Russian President Vladimir Putin would want to invade Ukraine, given the vast amount of control he has over Europe’s energy resources.

Those conversations, Bartiromo explained, were “why I questioned whether or not the whole thing was a ruse, with Jake Sullivan coming out so hysterical over the weekend telling us to get out of Ukraine, and Russia’s gonna invade today. Obviously, in retrospect, he was trying to change the conversation from Hillary Clinton and her bad behavior and her dirty tricks against Donald Trump.”

Right-wingers have baselessly convinced themselves that Clinton spied on Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and presidency, citing a report from former Special Counsel John Durham in which he made no such allegation and explicitly stated that there was no evidence of that happening.

Bartiromo’s guest, Gristedes and D’Agostino Foods Chairman and Chief Executive Officer John Catsimatidis, insisted that “Putin was never going to invade Ukraine” and that Putin “withdrew the troops” out of fear that Biden “would do something stupider.”

Putin has not withdrawn any of his forces, and Ukraine remains surrounded by 150,000 Russian troops.

Catsimatidis also believes that Biden has overblown the situation with Russia to get “inflation prices” and “Mexico” off the “front page of The New York Times.”

Bartiromo agreed.

“Yeah, it takes off the front page inflation and it takes off the front page Hillary Clinton and Jake Sullivan pushing the Russia collusion hoax for so many years,” she said.

Former Special Counsel Robert Mueller determined in his 2019 report that it was not a hoax.

Watch below:

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color blind means racism does not exist, esp systemic, CRT dog whistle ~ affirmative action

https://www.mediamatters.org/five/foxs-jesse-watters-praises-glenn-youngkin-claiming-hes-bringing-back-martin-luther-kings

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121 mma

Fox News has a two-track business model. Its audience watches the network to see its opinion hosts spew right-wing propaganda, while its advertisers pay for access to that audience, and cable providers pay to sell that audience a package that includes the network. The unhinged rhetoric of the network’s opinion hosts has scared many advertisers away; Fox executives in turn have pointed their business partners toward the network’s “news side” to maintain plausible credibility (that credibility never holds up under any scrutiny, but the lie is useful, as people say).

The news division turns into opinion programming: Fox News’ unprecedented ratings losses in recent weeks have led the network to turn its "news division" into advertisements for its opinion hosts. When some Fox viewers defected for fringe-right competitors like Newsmax and One America News, Fox frequently began promoting its opinion hosts during “news” segments, directly airing clips of its prime-time hosts during “news” segments, casting doubts on the election results hundreds of times, and actively supporting the president’s efforts to overturn election results.

Fox increases opinion programming:Additionally, Fox announced this week that they're reducing the number of "news" hours entirely, by replacing Martha MacCallum’s high-profile 7 p.m. show with one hosted by a rotating cast of Fox’s right-wing commentators.

By the numbers: Fox News built the lie that fueled the January 6 putsch; in thetwo weeks after the network itself called the election, Fox News cast doubt on election results nearly 800 times -- and that doesn't count Fox Business, which has its own stable of pro-Trump liars.

Lies upon lies: Fox News has spent months promoting and entertaining Trump's Big Lie that the election was stolen. And now it is lying to advertisers that it has a "straight news" division separate from its opinion programming.

Fox before the attack: Fox News host Jesse Watters, days before Capitol putsch: “We used to storm the castle … In 2021, let's relight that great American spirit.”

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520 mma

A new study from British medical journal The Lancet shows that the drug Fox News and President Donald Trump had relentlessly promoted may not be the miracle cure for COVID-19 that the network had made it out to be.

“A study of 96,000 hospitalized coronavirus patients on six continents found that those who received an antimalarial drug promoted by President Trump as a ‘game changer’ in the fight against the virus had a significantly higher risk of death compared with those who did not,” The Washington Post reported. “People treated with hydroxychloroquine... were also more likely to develop a type of irregular heart rhythm, or arrhythmia, that can lead to sudden cardiac death, it concluded.”

Fox News is the source of the president's belief that hydroxychloroquine is an effective treatment for the coronavirus. The network’s hosts and contributors promoted the drug literally hundreds of times, running with the flawed conclusions of grifters and charlatans. Trump responded by publicly promoting the drug and even saying that he was taking it personally, as his public health experts stressed that evidence supporting its use as a treatment was sparse.

Trump even changed federal policy based on Fox’s hydroxychloroquine coverage. Administration officials diverted time and resources from other potential efforts to fight the coronavirus toward the drug because of Fox’s influence. The network continued to tout the drug even as evidence mounted that it was ineffectual.

The drug Fox promoted, according to this Lancet study, actually makes things worse. Instead of listening to public health experts, the network sent the president -- and the federal government -- down a rabbit hole.

Also: Sean Hannity claimed that the worst side effect of hydroxychloroquine is “an allergic rash or upset stomach”; Fox host Jesse Wattersmocked people concerned over FDA warnings on hydroxychloroquine.

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/03/fox-news-is-a-fascist-network-propping-up-an-incompetent-buffoon-of-a-leader-coronavirus-proved-it/

no lnx

Fox News is a fascist network propping up an incompetent buffoon of a leader. Coronavirus proved it

Written by Hunter / Daily Kos March 17, 2020

Only hours after Donald Trump on Friday gave a press conference begrudgingly admitting the scope of the COVID-19 pandemic he had been insisting was “under control” for nearly a month, Fox News’ most toxic hosts revised their own previously denial-heavy rhetoric to match. Once again, it demonstrates the status of the network as “state news” operation devoted near-exclusively to the needs of conservative propaganda.

If the line from Dear Leader is that alarm over the virus is a “hoax” intended to damage him, that is what Sean Hannity will also say—even knowing that his words will kill some of the network’s own viewers. If the line from Dear Leader is that alarm over the virus is now warranted, Sean Hannity is himself freed to declare that alarm is warranted. But this, too, will be used primarily as a launching point for further praise of the self-promoting, incompetent Dear Leader.

Here is Sean Hannity on Friday, the evening after Trump shifted tone from sneering at administration critics to declaring a national emergency, while still sneering at administration critics. “Tonight, we are witnessing what will be a massive paradigm shift in the future of disease control and prevention. A bold, new precedent is being set, the world will once again benefit greatly from America’s leadership. It will give us reason to be proud as a country. The federal government, state governments, private businesses, top hospitals all coming together, under the president’s leadership, to stem the tide of the coronavirus.”

Note the use of the word “bold,” one of the otherwise near-illiterate president’s favorite adjectives. It is Dear Leader’s “leadership” that has allowed the United States to finally do what it has done in every similar crisis; declaring a national emergency is now not a longstanding designation allowing our or any government to take specific, defined steps to combat a new threat but a “bold new precedent” from Dear Leader, for the “benefit” of the world.

SeanHannity spent weeks lying about the virus, downplaying its dangerousness and its spread. Now that the game is up and members of his audience will, with near-certainty, be dying in large part due to Dear Leader’s inaction and Sean Hannity’s teleprompter, Sean Hannity will now spend weeks praising Dear Leader’s “boldness” with a North Korean polish and a distinctly Fox News sneer. The Washington Post notes that Hannity was matched in this new revision of state propaganda by Laura Ingraham, among others. Go only so far as Dear Leader himself is willing to; follow Dear Leader as Dear Leader meanders his mental way through each new moment of revelation. No further.

Devil-among-us Jerry Falwell Jr., a frequent Fox guest, was on the network Friday morning telling the Fox & Friends couch that his Liberty University would not be shuttering during the crisis, displaying the trademark Fox sneer while downplaying virus scares as “hype,” and saying “maybe now this is their next attempt to get Trump.” After Trump’s Friday declaration, Falwell changed his own tune to acknowledge the severity of the crisis—sort of. In practice, he defended his original decision but said that the Virginia governor’s ban on gatherings of 100 or more people “left us no practical choice.”

This week, after a “somber” Trump once again bowed to realities his advisers had never before been able to drill into his skull, Fox News hosts matched his new rhetoric as well.Useful network idiot Jesse Watterschanged his tune over the weekend. Not because of the presidential about-face, certainly not. It was “mom.”

“She is suspicious that I might have coronavirus. I wore the gloves all afternoon in the house. That’s what it is. I didn’t take the social distancing that seriously Friday, Saturday, and Sunday night, I went out to dinner here in the city. And I woke up this morning I realized that was not the right move.”

Do we really believe that Watters had not noticed that the world outside the Fox News studio was incongruent with the reports from inside until a morning revelation? Or was Monday morning the first moment in which it was safe to note it without penalty?

I am tired of this. I am very, very tired of the pretense that anything this scabby sore of a network does revolves around anything but propping up the most narrow and most radical of agendas; demonization of Dear Leader’s enemies and maudlin praise for Dear Leader’s boldness. It is a fascist network using the bog-standard rhetorical tools of fascism to prop up a fascist, incompetent buffoon of a leader. They will attack anyone on Dear Leader’s behalf. They will let their audience die—they will provide the crematory, if needed—if Dear Leader needs to just one more evening of adulation to get him through the next day without full-on emotional collapse.

Sean Hannity goads his viewers into support for ignoring even a pandemic until the moment it can no longer be ignored. He will goad his viewers again, this time into believing it was Dear Leader who limited the deaths to whatever horrific number they may rise to. Very, very rich men who want just a bit more money than they already have will watch him do it, and allow him to do it, and will pay him to do it.

They will, if anything, order that more flags be added to the network graphics.

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racist Fox News host blames Chinese people for coronavirus: ‘They eat raw bats and snakes’

Walter Einenkel / Daily Kos

Fox News’ Jesse Watters went after his favorite target Monday night: Chinese people. As host of the The Five, a show on which the cumulative intelligence of the panel adds up…

Fox's The Five completely implode when called out for mirroring White House talking points
Fox hosts celebrate the "opportunity" to work multiple jobs to survive: "I know people who want to work two jobs"
Fox's Jesse Watters says the United Nations "has always been an anti-Semitic institution," and has "a history of raping, of pillaging"
Fox host lowers the bar for Trump's conduct. Kennedy claimed the "quid pro quo" Trump is accused of is "the exact same thing" as what past presidents did and "is not necessarily illegal"
Tucker Carlson attacks Fox colleague Shep Smith, says Smith's program is partisan opinion, "not news"

an 519

Last weekend, Bill Nye appeared on Last Week Tonight with John Oliver for a segment about climate change. Nye issued a blunt warning that action must be taken to reign in climate change, or else there will be unavoidable dire consequences. The segment went viral, and, predictably, right-wing media lashed out at Nye:

While an onscreen chyron read "Climate Hysteria," Fox host Jesse Watters said of Nye: "If it was a real crisis, he wouldn't be joking like that."
Frequent Fox guest and climate-denier Joe Bastardi: "It's just crazy, are you angry?"
NRATV's Dana Loesch: "If the planet is on 'blanking' fire, and we're all going to die in 10-12 years, then how is it that the only action you want to take is to take people's money?"
Redstate ran the segment under the headline: "WATCH: Fake Reporter John Oliver and Fake Scientist Bill Nye Try To Sell You a Fake Crisis"
Glenn Beck's The Blaze: "Bill Nye loses it and melts down over climate change, goes on expletive-laden rant during late-night show"

Meanwhile, climate change is still pitifully undercovered in mainstream media.

At this very moment, Trump and allies of his administration are blocking more than 20 Democratic congressional probes. Historians, professors, and legal experts have explained that the administration's actions are unprecedented and that the administration's stonewalling of oversight could quickly set new precedent for unchecked executive power for years after Trump is gone.

Right-wing media have provided extensive cover for the Trump administration. Brian Kilmeade said, "So there are countless investigations. ... And for the most part, the White House looked at all of this and said this is out of control." Jeanine Pirro stated, "The only constitutional crisis is the one created by Obama administration officials of a false collusion." Jesse Watters, simply claimed, "All presidents refuse to hand things over to Congress."

There's a real cost to normalizing this blanket stonewalling. As law professor David Alan Sklansky said, “Our system depends on some commitment by both parties and by all public officials to continuing a constitutional order.”

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jesse watters

Sean Hannity, Trump’s “shadow” White House chief of staff

Jesse Watters, an O’Reilly crony turned Trump loyalist [vid]

Greg Gutfeld, a Trump critic who became his champion [vid]

Fox’s Trumpist retrenchment will help him secure the GOP nomination

fox’s prime-time shakeup comes as the network faces the most sustained challenge to its dominance over the right-wing press in years. The new lineup suggests the network’s strategy for shoring up its right-wing hegemony relies on restoring its Trumpist credentials.

Fox News dismisses the link between wildfires and climate change, mocks those that do make the connection

Fox turns to its go-to explanation for catastrophic wildfires: It’s poor forest management. And it’s environmentalists’ fault.

Anatomy of a smear campaign

Justifying and calling for Krasner’s removal

Blaming Krasner for high crime rates

Linking Krasner to George Soros

Fox News amplified the architects of the harassment campaign that resulted in threats of violence against at least three different children’s hospitals

Methodology

Early life and education

Career

Controversies

Amanda Terkel "ambush"

Chinatown segment

John Podesta comments

Ivanka Trump comments

QAnon comments

Anthony Fauci comments

Emma DiGiovine deception

Personal life

Bibliography

See also

References

2020s

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racist Fox News host blames Chinese people for coronavirus: ‘They eat raw bats and snakes’